In my G+, Michelle Gilbert came up in my suggestions and, as I occasionally do with new names that pop up, I checked out her G+. Among other things, I noticed that she had an entry on people stealing photos with the last comment on her entry being "Viva copyright" That got me thinking about copyrights.

Copyright is interesting. We are actually hitting the second generation of IP discussion which is where I feel the internet is going to start doing a lot of growing up on this topic. The first generation on IP discussion was all about "Information must be free!" Since the information that was being "freed" usually belonged to someone (often a large corporation), everyone was ok with it. Certainly noone really would have said "Viva copyright" without being accused of being a corporate tool. Certainly Penny Arcade took some heat for this comic.

http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/04/29

However, we've hit a point where a lot of people who are not large corporations are beginning to take an interest in their own IP being ripped off. Now that we've hit a point where it isn't just large businesses getting ripped off, the "Information must be free" battle cry is being toned down.

A small example was on Gamespot during some form of Tomb Raider retrospective where they used a DeviantArt picture without permission. The person contacted Gamespot with threats of a "cease and desist" despite the fact that they did not have the IP rights to the subject themselves. Gamespot pulled the image.

Another example (which is a for-profit example) is that a t-shirt vendor had made a "talk to the hand" shirt using Iron Man's hand. A second person decided to just swipe the design for themselves. The first vendor decided to sue the second vendor despite the fact that neither had any IP rights to Iron Man. I don't know what happened with that.

I could go on but I think I've illustrated my point. I think that, now that swiping someone's IP isn't just "sticking it to the man" and the RIAA isn't the only (poor) example of people concerned about IP rights, we're going to see a lot more interesting discussion from people who do not favor extremes such as SOPA but also appreciate that "information must be free" is no longer a valid battlecry. (Someone I know who will go nameless told me over the holidays that they favor SOPA. When I asked why, they used themselves as an example and pointed out that they have almost the entire Wii library copied and have never paid for a single game. That was impressive both in terms of volume and their willingness to admit that they're part of the problem.) Rather, I think ....... or would like to think......that what is going to come out of this is a more nuanced approach between the two extremes which recognizes that there needs to be a way of allowing people to protect their IP without being draconian in nature.

Perhaps it was the Occupy Boston getting the boot over the weekend or the whole Occupy Ports thing today but I found myself chewing over a discussion that I read about Occupy that made me less sympathetic to certain segments of the cause. In short, it was pointed out that a lot of people who are arguing loan forgiveness/being let down that their degree isn't working for them/etc are the ones that have degrees of ...... questionable.......merit. The arguments from the pro side is that not everyone is cut out to work at a "practical" degree and that the students need to have the freedom to spread their wings and take the path less followed. The other argument was that "they" lied to those students about the degrees and the usefulness thereof.

The two counters in my mind:

The first is that you have a lot of people arguing in college that they are young adults and their voice should be heard. Fair enough but, if you claim the title of young adult, that also comes with the responsibility of choosing a career path that may not be a dream path but will pay the bills.To me, the argument that people should be free to explore themselves and take degrees that are more in line with who they are artisticly and philosophically is an Ant & the Grasshopper argument. You're perfectly welcome to take something that is philosophically inline with your spiritual side as long as you accept that you're going to starve in the snow and die. (I think schools do children a disservice where they tell kids the touchy-feely end where the Ants take the Grasshopper in. I far prefer the original ending as it imparts the notion that there are consequences to blowing stuff off and you can't rely on others to bail out your lazy ass nor is there a social obligation to bail others out.) What I do is certainly not what I dreamt of and the argument that I'm a corporate tool is a valid one but it also pays my bills.

The second one is an old South Park argument. Who is "they"? It is said a lot that "they" tricked/lied to them but "they" is not defined. If one is arguing "they" are the parents/counselors, that has some validity. But, when one refuses to define "they" or uses it to duck responsibility for poor decision making, the argument has considerably less validity.
It just seems to me that a lot of the people talking about how their Philosophy degree isn't helping them should spend less time blaming others and more time accepting responsibility for their actions. While I have sympathy for those who did what should be "the right things" and are still out on their butt, I have less for those who took 4+ years of blow-off courses and are now whining that there are no jobs.

There's been a lot of talk about college loan forgiveness lately at the federal level. Personally, I have issues with that. When I went to college, I worked to earn money. In fact, the summers that I held down two full time jobs helped crystalize the notion that I didn't want to do that the rest of my life. I also saved. Except for comics (and even then I usually had coupons to a number of stores), I bought pretty much everything secondhand. The first apartment that I had during my last years was a pit (which makes the occasional nostalgic memory kinda weird). Even then, I was so obviously broke in the last year that my father kept asking me if I needed money. The reason that I have issues with loan forgiveness is because a lot of the people who are griping/protesting are the same ones who have to have their morning Starbucks as well as the latest version of the Iphone. They're the ones on Gamefaqs and the Escapist who take this weird pride in the notion of never buying used games. These sort of spending habits often kill any sympathy that I have.

But I realize that things are different from when I went to college. The internet has killed a lot of jobs (When's the last time anyone got a summer job at a music store? How about Blockbuster?), college is more expensive, etc. So I'm not wholly heartless to the situation. I think that any loan forgiveness program should have two key points which focus a little less on how much a person has and more on what they're going to do.

The first is something that borrows inspiration from the U.S. between World Wars and modern-day countries such as Germany. Countries like Germany have analyzed what their country needs and offer their loans accordingly. We should do the same. Under this system, nurses and engineers, both jobs that labor studies keep saying that we have shortage of, would be far more eligible for partial to full loan forgiveness. Philosophy majors, lawyers, and game designers would not because of either having a surplus or having no real overall value to the country as a whole.

For those who wish to attack that last statement, I'm not looking down on those jobs so much as I'm asking "What does our country need?". Any federal loan forgiveness should be based on how vital the job is to our country. Game designer is a great job and, if you can get it, more power to you. But it's not something that our country needs on the whole and there's a large surplus of people who grew up on games that are trying to design games for a living.

The second is that any loan forgiveness should cut off at the Bachelor's Degree. The fact of the matter is that a lot of students are doing grad school as a way of hiding from the real world for a few more years. While I understand the impulse, I don't have a problem with weeding those people out. The ones that are truly serious about grad school as a way to enhance their career will find a way to fund it (especially if they're having their first four years funded for free). This may mean that many will have to go out in the world for a few years but I don't see that as a bad thing. Working on the lower rung of your chosen profession helps a person focus on what they want to do with their career rather than just getting a catch-all MBA. It also gives people an idea of whether this is really the career path that they want to take. Finally, it gives them a taste of life after college which is usually the sobering experience people need before they decide on a Masters. Having a year or two away from the keggers often forces a lot of people to do the "growing up" that they really should do before going on to graduate school.

I've made reference to this both here and at other sites such as the Escapist but it occurs to me that it would be easier to write such stuff down.

So, why am I quitting? Well, there are many reasons but it boils down to three main ones.

1) My collection and the number of unfinished games in that collection.

As you can see by my games list, I have a lot of games. I've been collecting since the Intellivision II and, over time, my collection has grown to be a sizable one. The problem is that, while I'm collecting, I'm not playing them all the way through. I would estimate that I've beaten 20-30 percent of my games. This is not because I don't want to. In fact, a while back, I started a "loop" (Started in the Rs for reasons that are unimportant to this blog)where I start going through and actually beating my games. However, besides other RL activities (Sidenote: Largely, on a whim, I decided to hike the Pikes Peak Incline last weekend. I made it all the way which is better than, at least, 4 people that day but it's a lot tougher than it looks.), keeping up with new games cuts into the time to actually complete the old games. Then those new games don't get finished, vicious cycle, etc.

To give an idea of how ridiculous this is:

I own: Final Fantasy 1, 2, Mystic Quest,4-10, 12, 13, Dissidia, Duodecim, Crisis Core, Dirge of Cerebrus.

I've beaten 1, Mystic Quest, 4, Dissidia

I've often said that I could go an entire console generation without buying a single new game and still have new experiences. As this generation closes out, I'm going to find out if that theory is true or not. At the very least, playing only the games that I already own will give me more time which leads to:

2) Opportunity Cost

Playing games costs time and money. Both of which could be put to other things. As an example, I want to relearn German. Maybe I'll start traveling again. Money-wise, I could speed up my retirement. I dunno. I figure that I'll make up the future as I go along, same as everyone else.

These feeling may be exacerbated by my age. Being old enough to be able to talk about the Reagan Administration with both clarity and firsthand experience (Technically, I also have first-hand experience with the Ford and Carter administration but I was kinda young to talk with any clarity), I am past the mid-point of what my expected life span is. I'm not sure that I want to fill my remaining years with new iterations of Space Marine Bloodbath. It doesn't inspire anyone when old men on their deathbed talk about how they spent years sitting in front of the TV. My age also figures into:

3) Disillusionment with the entire industry.

A little of this is with gamers. I remarked a few years ago that I could understand where CJayC was coming from when he said he was no longer able to identify with gamers. Due to the fact that I belong to what seems to be a decreasing percentile everytime Gamefaqs runs a "How old are you?" poll, I understand that most of it is an age gap. But some of it is not. The increased fanboyism. The inability to rationally assess gaming's importance as compared to the rest of the world. The increased willingness to sign away one's consumer rights.

However, most of my ire is directed at the industry itself. I am SO SICK of supporting an industry that feels it necessary to wage war on the very cash cow that pays for it's existence. Draconian DRM schemes. The shift away from physical media and customer ownership. The vilification of the used market. DLC milking schemes. (As I was beating Ghost Ship on Rogue Galaxy, I couldn't help but think that this is the type of "extra" that the current generation has you pay for.)

The list goes on but it basicly comes down to that the gaming industry is one that I don't want to support anymore. Perhaps, if the 83 crash repeated itself, both gamers and the industry would get a renewed appreciation for each other. However, that isn't going to happen and I'm tired of the industry becoming increasingly anti-consumer. If the industry wants to wage war on it's customers, then it can do with one less target.

I wrote this at another website but I think it bears repeating here.

I guess the problem for me is that it does kinda boil down to it being a reboot/rewrite. During the oughts, DC's entire lineup could be described as Prelude to Countdown to Infinite Final Crisis and it's tie-ins. That whole thing went on so long that they actually started retconning some of the retcons they did at the beginning of the Crisis books. Other than failed story arcs for Superman and Wonder Woman, all that was really done during the entire period were the "Skittles Wars" in which we suddenly got a rainbow of rings.

Now we're doing a big overarching reboot ...... again. While I can understand it to be a jumping-on point, they're already messing with it by saying "Well, it won't be a total reboot. We're still continuing these story arcs". This, to me, seems a good way to nullify the point of it as now the scorecard will be "So, what's been carried over and what hasn't?".

That and Barbara is now going to be Batgirl again. To me, that seems to be the biggest news out of all this. We'll see how this works out. Gail Simone has been writing Oracle for years but I think that DC is forgetting their history with this.

Before Barbara got shot, Batgirl had about as much impact on the DC universe as Bathound did. Despite what Wiki says, she was just another spin-off character who, for awhile, had a regular role in the Batman families but nothing much was really done with her. They tried (I used to have one of the comics from when she was a congresswoman) but, by the time of the Killing Joke, she was still irrelevant. If it hadn't been for The Killing Joke and Yale/Ostrander running with the character, I imagine she would have been long relegated to the same limbo as characters such as Black Thorn & Gypsy ...... or would have been disposed of in the same manner as Kathy Kane.

So is it going to work out? Well, on one hand, Gail Simone will be writing her and I truly do understand the reasoning for Barbara to walk again. In a universe where people keep rising from the dead, it does seem hard to reconcile her remaining paralyzed (although I attribute "death is an inconvenience" to very poor writing/editorial direction). On the other hand, given the mishandling of Cassandra and Stephanie, we'll see if history repeats itself.As a sidenote, I may have the opposite reaction. I have long since dropped the superhero genre except for the annual What If? comics solely due to boredom with it. Yeah, I occasionally dabble in a Sinestro Corps war or whatnotbut, having collected comics since the early 80s, I can honestly say that most of the superhero genre is just really poorly written.

It would be nice if this reboot actually worked out and I started regularly collecting superhero titles again.

(Note: Since Gamespot censors things, I am talking about Marcus Fenix liking guys.)

With Gears of War 3 coming up, I wanted to talk about something that I've thought about for a long time. Namely the idea of Marcus Fenix or any popular game character being gay Certainly it's been joked about but I want to talk about how it could be done seriously and why it would be a good thing.

One of the problems that I think is prevalent in games that want to explore the topic is that the developers always feel that they have to make a big deal out of it if a character has a same-sex orientation. It either has to be the main plot or a large secondary plot with lots of social context. While this is all well and good, the problem is that this approach creates insurmountable obstacles. How do you tackle these issues within a gaming context? If you make it a metaphor, then you risk obscuring what you're actually talking about. If you play the whole thing straight, then you risk writing yourself into a corner or getting shunned by the audience you're hoping to reach.

When I talk about the audience shunning the game, I'm not talking the Religious Right. I'm talking about gamers as a whole. On this subject, gamers tend to say one thing and do another. A while back on Gamefaqs, during the lead-up to Devil May Cry 4, people were speculating on Nero's identity as a son of Dante or a long-lost brother and the idea of him being Dante's boyfriend came up as a joke. I decided to run with this and made a topic on the notion. I laid out the supporting evidence on why it could be a possibility and made it clear that it would mean no behaviorial changes for Dante especially him adopting any stereotypical behavior. Then I floated the question of whether it would be such a bad thing if Dante were gay.

The response was completely negative. One person said that they would sell all their DMC games because the series would be irrevocably ruined. Others were not so dramatic but there was not a single positive response to the concept.

Now, you might say "Pfft. DMC fans....". Fair enough but I've done some follow-up over the years. Noone ever wants to see a gay character in a series they're following and very few would actually buy a game that dealt with issues such as ****sexuality. Everyone says "Well, we SHOULD have these games" but very few would buy them. It's difficult to even get a real discussion on the topic and a lot of gaming sites don't help. I realize that they have to censor the word or every 15-year-old on the site would be hurling it around as a slur all day. However, not only does it hinder any conversation on the topic, it actually creates negative connotations. When the word gay is treated in the same context as racial slurs, then it sends an underlying message that the word and everything associated with it are in the same undesirable class.

So, part of the problem is the perception that you have to make a big deal out of it if you're going to do it. But what if you went in the opposite direction? What if you treated it as something that people just accept? My inspiration on this came from one of our oldest gaming characters, Samus Aran.

When Metroid came out, women were little more than quest objects. For all the importance that they had to the storyline, we might as well have been told "Your bag of gold is in another castle." Metroid comes out and the booklet talked about how this bounty hunter was the baddest of the bad asses. Through the game, this is proven true as Kraid, Ridley, and anyone else between Samus and Mother Brain get faces full of missiles, Wave Beams, and a plethora of other delightful ass-kickers. We give Mother Brain a slappin', escape from an exploding base like an 80's action star, watch the credits and......wait.....IT WAS A GIRL IN THAT ARMOR?!? I remember that, to me and my best friend, this was a big thing. This was probably one of the most talked-about endings that we saw for the NES. In many ways, it altered our 14-year-old perceptions because, up until then, girls either swooned for the hero or got kidnapped but, with Samus, this raised the question of whether girls could be something other than quest objects or love interests.

Since then, Nintendo has treated Samus' gender as an almost non-issue. Yes, there have been subtle reminders but the main thrust of gender in a Metroid game is "my gender is less important than who I am and what I do." In fact, there was only one game that decided to beat us over the head with it:

Yeah, that worked out great.

Even if they hadn't turned Samus into an emotionally overwrought 15-year-old girl with daddy issues, I suspect that the game would have still gotten panned because it kept beating us over the head. Noone likes to be beaten over the head with anything. Back in the 90s, this killed the show Ellen because, while Ellen coming out was initially a contraversial move, the show kept beating the audience over the head with the fact that Ellen was a lesbian until even organizations such as GLAAD got tired of the show's tone.

So, maybe that is the key to getting people comfortable with it. Instead of making it a big deal, try making it into something that the ingame characters/world think of as unremarkable. Instead of having it take up a third of the game with Marcus struggling to find his identity, have Marcus and Dom kiss as part of the victory celebration over the Lambent/Locust. (Yes, I know about Dom and Maria. I would think Dom's orientation could be explained in an Alexander the Great way.) By portraying it as normal and acceptable to the point of unremarkable, it may actually be more effective in making gamers comfortable with it rather than making it part of an overblown plot that beats gamers over the head with "the message".

In many ways, Marcus would be the perfect candidate. He is the main character in a popular game series. The factors for a same-sex romance are there. (Not counting Maria for obvious reasons, Anya has been the only female in the entire series up until the new girl for Gears 3.) Certainly, Marcus and Dom are close enough that being lovers wouldn't seem so unlikely. Epic is a stable company that could survive any backlash arising from this from gamers or the religious right. (After Fox News said that Bulletstorm can make you a rapist, it's not like Epic is going to get brownie points with Fox News viewers anyway.) Marcus is a manly man so it would show that being gay doesn't automatically make you a hairdresser.

Marcus Fenix is close to the perfect candidate forshowing that being gay doesn't dictate your behavior or is some type of abnormality. By just making it something that everyone else in the Gears world sees as normal to the point of being unremarkable, it might spawn the same level of changed perceptions in gamers today that an intergalactic bounty hunter did for me 25 years ago.

It's almost a pity that it'll never happen. I realize that, despite Epic's little jokes, the odds of a CliffyB game tackling any sort of social issue is as likely as me growing wings and flying to the moon and that's a shame. While I will enjoy hacking up Locust with a Lancer as much as I did in the last two games, it's a pity that this is all the game ever aspire to.

So a couple weeks ago, I read the Enigma of Amigara Fault. It was okay although not the horror masterpiece that I was led to believe. It did get me thinking about the differences in perceptions of society not just in horror but in fiction in general.

In the west, our fiction tends to center around the individual being stronger than society. The lone hero who triumphs over evil or works out what needs to be done to save the day. The one person who rises above all others.

With eastern fiction, it is different. The society is all powerful and individuals are little more than leaves tossed around by the wind. The Demotivator about Doubt symbolizes this perfectly.

Even when the path seems self-destructive, it is always society that will win out. Yoshida was terrified of entering the hole to the point of having a complete meltdown in front of her hole. Owaki had nightmares that told him exactly what would happen. There were several points in the story where, in western fiction, they would have won out. Whether it was when Owaki filled up Yoshida's hole or when they hook up in the tent, there were points that a Western author would have had them walk away using one of the following notions:

By filling up the hole, Owaki laid to rest the spirit driving Yoshida to her destruction.

They found comfort and strength in each other's arms to turn their back on fate and forge a new destiny for themselves.

But, in this story, their efforts change nothing and, in the end, both enter the hole.

Even the fault itself could be considered as a metaphor for society. When you enter the hole, the character is still themselves but, slowly, the hole twists and shapes their body until what comes out of the other side of the mountain isn't recognizable in any but the most superficial ways. In society, we also start out the same way. We are filled with bold ideas for the future but, slowly, we get changed. Sometimes, we bring the pressures that change us on to ourselves. After we get married and start a family, that trip to Nepal suddenly isn't a priority anymore. Other times, the pressures are completely external. In this economy, more and more people are doing unpaid overtime because the alternative is unemployment.

As a personal example, I had a friend who, when Napster got taken down, said that he was going to save up enough to have his own server farm dedicated to freely redistributing music. 4 years later, when asked, he said that he was still going to do it but it was plain that the enthusiasm to do it had left him and that the project had been moved to "someday". In the end, he never did do it.

I guess what I find most interesting is that we have such differing views but, in many ways, western society has as many pressures to conform as does eastern society. We still view ourselves as rugged individualists even as our society molds us to conform to it's standards. I don't know if this means that the people in the East are just more fatalistic or if, in the West, we just delude ourselves more. I just find it interesting that, despite having similar levels of societal conformity as time goes by, we have such differing perspectives.

This is just a vent entry.

Something that's been kinda getting me is how many webcomics have the creator talk about how they're having a nervous breakdown doing the comic and how hard it is, etc. Oddly, these are usually the lesser known webcomics as, Megatokyo aside, most of the well-known ones manage to keep to a schedule without excessive whining. As an example, Nukees, after a 3 year period of figuring out which schedule works best for it, has managed to update regularly for 11 years. I realize that this schedule doesn't work for everyone and the larger comics take longer to draw and write and, if they're in color, colored. However, it is still an example of what can be done.

But there still needs to be perspective here. The comic that inspired this only has 1 comic book sized page a week. Given that the creator does the whole thing, that's the equivalent of three comic book pages a week or twelve pages a month....when the person stays on schedule. I'm not wholly unsympathetic. I realize that a comic takes longer to do than to read but.....

1) This is something that you chose to do. You decided that a cube job isn't for you. That's great. I like seeing people who are doing what they claim to love for a living rather than my existance of cubicle hell. But, when you're doing this, I will be far less sympathetic when you whine about how hard it is.

2) You aren't working that hard. Whining that working at a task that takes roughly 10-12 hours a week is putting you into nervous breakdown territory gets no sympathy for me because I work 40+ hours a week. This goes double for people who run three-panel cut-n-paste sprite comics.

3) Whining that part of your stress is because it isn't making any money also gets no sympathy from me. Most start-up businesses have people who are working 80+ hours for the first few years to break even. In the early days of webcomics, it was easier to stand out but you were also doing a lot of trailblazing. Now that strips like Penny Arcade have proven that you can make a living on it as well as providing both legitimacy and "safety tips" for what not to do with your webcomic, many other artistic types want in. The problem is, now that the trails have been blazed and everyone wants to "live the dream", it is a lot harder to stand out. While you're benefitting from the work of those that have gone before, you are now just part of the mob who want in now that it has been proven that it can be done.

These days, you have to be able to run your own business which requires a certain amount of acumen. It is no longer just a matter of slapping your comic up there, adding a banner ad, and waiting for hits. If you wanted to do that, you should have done it in the 90s when you were taking a big gamble that the whole field would be just a fad. If you want your webcomic to work as a business, you're going to have to treat it as a business which means long hours, hard work and a lot of study. Being a webcartoonist is no longer an easy path to avoiding working in a cube.

I'm not writing this to rip on webcartoonists in general. I'm just writing this as a way to providing perspective. As a webcartoonist, you are responsible for your own success. You don't have to worry about layoffs. You don't have to work in a cube. You are working in a job that you should love rather than "it pays the bills as it grinds away at me". You aren't taking orders from a boss who is enriching themselves while paying you as little as possible.

Your job ain't that bad. But it'll only work if you stop whining and actually commit yourself to your success. If you think you really have it that hard, work a cube job that believes in unpaid overtime for a couple months. Odds are you would never complain about how hard it is to make your webcomic again.

[Spoilers for Duke Nukem Forever and Medal of Honor (recent)]

Well, I finished DNF two days ago. Definitely not a great game but I've played worse. Now that I have played all the way through it, I found it interesting that, apart from the intro, it really wasn't more offensive than the original Duke3D was. Yes, there was the Hive level but, other than the juvenile wall boobs, it was just an updated version of the podgirls from Duke3D.....with awful lighting.

I'm thinking about tone because of a criticism that a lot of the reviews had. A lot of the reviews talked about how "DukeIS a relic" or "Duke fills a 15-year-old boy niche that doesn't exist anymore" (both actual quotes). The overall judgement is that a character like Duke Nukem isn't needed in today's market.

This got me thinking about how many other games have been like Duke in tone yet still received both critical acceptance and gamer acceptance. I found it hard to come up with many. Maybe Saint's Row but, for the most part, games are now "serious business".

Oddly, when I posed the suggestion during a Duke hatefest on The Escapist that I hope that this is the last Duke game because the industry doesn't have room for Duke, the posters took it as a challenge. They weren't defending Duke so much as they were defending the notion that the gaming industry can do anything. Oddly, not only could they not come up withraunchy games that have done well,many of their suggestions bore my hypothesis out. The most popular suggestion was that the next game should have an aging Duke who is no longer relevant in this world go on a Hero Journey to become more relevant and less of an 80s macho man.

Gamefaqs was no different. Before the game came out, a number of female gamers said that Duke's chauvinistic attitudes had no place in gaming. Afterwards, there were a few topics that said that the death of the Holsom Twins should have struck Duke deeper (emotional rememberances, vows of revenge, etc) which struk me as odd since they were one-note joke characters.

As it stands, Bulletstorm is probably the true Duke successor and, aside from the fact that it also got criticism for tone, it also had several moments of "pulling the drama tag" Haven't played Shadows of the Damned yet but I imagine it will do the same.

And it isn't just Duke or raunchy games. When I played Medal of Honor, it was level after level of gunning down the Taliban....,I mean, the Opposing Force with only the slightest hints of story in it. Then, in the last levels, the drama tag is pulled and one of the characters dies and there is all this attempted emotional resonance. All I could think about was "Didn't we just kill roughly 1/8 of the population of Afg....some place in exchange for 1 Special Forces guy (There were also a handful of marines and a chopper pilot killed but that was during the non-dramatic part.)? That's a pretty good trade. It also doesn't help that, as we're supposed to mourn the guy who has made the ultimate sacrifice, you have a few jets swoop past and cover the mountain in explosions." It was just jarring how we shifted from "Wheeee!!! Kill 'em all!" to "SERIOUS DRAMA!!!" It's like we have to have greater meaning all the time in our games now.

It's interesting. It seems that, while gaming has made great strides both as a story medium and as an art form, those strides seem to have squeezed outroom for some of the originalgametypes/characters that got it off the ground. Perhaps, that's a good thing that games are now "Serious Business" but it's a pity that characters/games like Duke are now consigned to the same dustbin as 80s action movies.

Sidenote: Played the Catherine Demo. It seems to be a more polished version of the standard Japanese Hentai/Dating sim from Japan. Penny Arcade's Tycho said that this was the first game that made him explore fear of committment. I would respond "No more than any of the bajillion other Hentai/Dating sims that have come before".

I feel a need to vent about a game that I thought that I would really like and, since I rarely update this poor neglected blog anyway, I figured this is as good a place as any as to why the further adventures of Issac Clarke just don't interest me. The rundown ofthe game'ssins (spoilers):

Crappy code. In the church, when you get jumped by that three-legged critter, I fired the hovering saw. From my view point, it was directly embedded (and, by embedded, I mean the tentacleappeared to be in the center of the saw)in the glowy thing that severs the tentacle with the creature registering nothing. This happened again with the Tormentor although I'm not completely sure with that one. Line gun also had issues as more than once I saw a blast pass directly through a critter with no effect (usually resulting in a face full of claw). Once again, it could just be me with that but it happened often enough with the line gun that I'm going to say "No. It's not just me."

Not scary: This may be partially my fault as I set it to normal. (I normally set horror to easy for a rental so I can judge it by atmoshere.) It may also be a problem with a sequel as you kinda know that the marker means "rarrr, Necromorphs". However, it wasn't even managing "startling" this time around. I actually started giggling when Nicole jumped Issac and tried to jam a hypodermic in his eye.

Nicole Brennan's initial haircut: Why does she look like Barbara Streisand with a bowl haircut? Oh well, the rest of the game, she just appears as a bloody corpse that evidently swallowed a floodlight so I suppose it doesn't matter.

Reveals that aren't: So was ANYONE surprised when Daina turned out to be a Unitologist? It's not like there weren't 800,000 hints dropped during the first 5 chapters. Then she gets a few seconds of screen time and gets killed, prompting a "what the hell was the point of that?". (That and "We established that a gun ship is prowling around outside and will fire into the church. Why are you in a dome that is 70% outside-facing glass?")

Dead Story: What finally got me to stop was I realized that I don't care what happens. Yes, Issac is talking and taking off his helmet now but the story still has as much emotional resonance as a piece of cardboard. I am given to understand that the story supposedly rotates around Issac forgiving himself for Nicole's death but I got to Chapter 6 and, much like all of Dead Space 1, I still don't care about her. I actually care far more about Kazuya Mishima than Nicole Brennan and Kazuya actually managed to make World War 3 seem dull.

I'm guessing that we also learn more about the Unitologists but, at this point, I kinda wish they'd all just drink the Kool-Aid so everyone else can stop painting the walls with their innards. Blah blah, Altman, blah, Marker, blaaaaah. Can someone please fire the story writers and get someone who can create an interesting religion? John Ostrander once credited part of his success with the Spectre on his religious background. Maybe that's what EA needs. Maybe using lifeless drones to write the story is what makes the story lifeless.

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While it's too bad that I won't get to play Severed (because Extraction had 1000X the emotional resonance than Issac "emotionless automaton" Clarke had in the first one), I think this is where the franchise and I part ways.