castorp

"A letter to the guy who harassed me outside the bar" by Emily Heist Moss on Role / Reboot "You don’t get it because in your world, this is just you being clever and hilarious, just a little light-hearted late-night banter! Where's my sense of humor? Dude, you are the third, or fifth, or ninth man this week to be rude to me, to think that what you want [...] is more important than my comfort or safety."

Man, first I thought you were making fun of me for (re-)stating the obvious.You are welcome.

Reading the experiences people have here, I wonder why I don't have such a hard time playing this game as lots of others seem to have - I'm not that good a gamer, and I manage normal with most ships fine enough most of the time. Then someone says something like 'Yeah, what's up with the pause-button?' - mind blown! I pause everything, every time. Probably to do with me playing too much Baldur's Gate back in the day. So my advice: Pause to time your shots, pause to give your crew orders, pause to open/close doors, etc = pause! And for the boss (no big spoiler, just what you need to beat him, in my opinion - probably said already many times before in here): Ah, yeah, and pause! Should be okay.

I really liked the combat in God of War I and II on the hardest two difficulties. You had to be careful with every enemy, be tactical about it, plan your approach. Still very hard, but very satisfying when you managed to pull through. Never had much for combat in FPS', but I had a lot of fun with it in Bioshock 2, again on very hard (or what's it called) - probably the most fun I had with combat in a first person game ever.

Jake said over here:

Ah, yeah, I always wear those.

I like to explore. Long-vacant houses, industrial ruins, old quarries, etc. Sometimes there are 'Do not enter' signs, but if I get in without breaking anything, the place is not in visible or planned use by any owner and without noticeable security I feel okay to ignore those. Worst that can happen, besides hurting myself, is that some security-guard comes by, and if he gets me (only once it was close - the most exciting thing ever, even if probably nothing would have happened) I suppose there will be shouting and maybe a bit of arm-twisting - same with police, and as long as they don't find fuel and matches or a sprayer on me I guess I'm even fine in a penal sense. In the USA I fear I'd get shot roaming around. Get shot and it would be legal. Most probably an irrational fear (?), but that's the first thing that comes to mind when I think about this gun-issue, or guns in the USA in general. Guns scare me.

Woah, surprisingly not just oh-those-silly-Japanese. Cool! (Or maybe I imagine the profoundness and this is supposed to be just silly, who knows.)

Oh the music - Jedi Knight, those cinematics, my childhood - some sentimentality just hit the fan, John Williams you bastard.

Oh, his grammar impediment was rather intriguing, it were the drawing style and typography that put me off.

I'd be happy to receive TFoL, if you still have a copy.

Haha.I can remember enough parties where people bore this thought behind their awkward eyes glancing in my direction, before, relieved, returning to their world of pretty people making sense and unstrained happiness. I, for one, welcome this change subbes.

Fröhliche Weihnachten!

You mean the old one, no? It's Nr 100 of Mark "Double Fine" Hamers great Polaroids. Besides looking like a serial killer the guy looked quite a bit like me.Nach, I remember that, very disturbing disturbing picture. Like a baby/monster-bank robber.

Happy birthday to all the members of this community who have their birthday today and on other days. (Sorry, I like you Thumbsters, but it's like every day there is a birthday, it's madness I tell you.)

Thank you! Very enlightening. Marvellous pieces of human engineering and trailer making. Some damn ugly watches though, but I do understand a bit why one would like to own one. And yeah, really, watching those four trailers was a lot more fulfilling than enduring Transformers.

Yeah, great game! Good cast as well, light-hearted, likeable, with some depth even. Though the story is nothing to write home about it is quite good too, with some seriousness, some interesting undertones, but the whole game doesn't take itself too serious. The whole tone of the game is just...right.

I didn't get one either. Something's amiss.

I totally agree. My comment was rather an exaggeration of how a read "Is that not allowed now either?", which for me is an expression of a certain attitude towards feminism or discussions thereof I find very aggravating. But instead of formulating that in a proper or civil way I took the snarky route - well thank you for drawing attention to that.

I'm glad someone has the guts to stand up and question the P(olitical)C(orrectness)-society of feminazis and their battle against fun.I liked Alyx. I think the 'one-sidedness' of their relationship has rather to do with Valves decision to make Gordon the silent protagonist. And her role in the game is to have a relationship with the player, but I didn't see it as very romantic either - rather a care-about, friendship thing, a vessel for positive feedback and strong ties to the narrative. So maybe more a player-bait or human-bait, than (male) nerd-bait, and the way it is executed (the way she is portrayed, as Ben pointed out) makes it pretty good in my eyes (even though the outline is the usual male-female-dynamic). Mh, not sure, the set-up does seem suspicious, with her (only? - I don't remember her driving the narrative, ah, yeah, just when she needed to be saved) purpose being the positive feedback for the (in the mind of the creators probably male and straight) player. What do other people think? The thing about toning her down sounds to me rather like Valve's practice of over-focus-testing their stuff and tuning it to the point of no conceivable edges then sexism on their part. But yeah, maybe their focus-groups wouldn't have had a problem with a male sidekick making light fun of the player and they shouldn't have budged, who knows, grey stuff.

I kind of agree (regarding the FC3-talks, not the stuff about some trend - I very much enjoy the show, as always, thanks guys). Though the casts discussions were couched in 'yeah really, we shouldn't talk about it too much, we haven't played for that long'-disclaimers, and yeah, talking about first impressions is totally valid, it felt a bit off. Felt a bit like hurt sensibilities about them unwashed masses not recognizing the brilliance of FC2, or, alternatively, defensiveness against the new contender who enables said masses to finally get it - 'I knew them before they sold out'-style - were steering the discussion. As well, I mean. Additionally to the as always present insightfulnes-äh, insight and high intelligence.

Please stop muddling up those two kinds of misrepresentation and acting as if the existence of the one negates the validity of complaint against the other. It is not the same!As said, those examples are power fantasies for men, they were not created for women to masturbate to cater to their base instincts. Then those roles are surrounded by thousands of other roles men (are allowed to) play - the problem is that the range of roles for women - the mere quantity as well - is a lot smaller, there the one-dimensional sexualized/weak/devote/dumb is rather the norm. When I see Kratos I might think, boy, I'm inadequate in light of his hyper-masculinty - but no, actually not, it is supposed to be 'hyper' after all, he is in charge and everything - I want to be like him. And honestly, I don't have to think about that, I just turn on the TV and watch a sitcom, where fat ugly men are together with the prettiest girls. For women (I can only imagine), oh, for the creators of this game women are sex toys for the god of war, lets see, comics, yeah, the good old T'n'A-contortions, lets watch a chick-flick, or rather go to the book-store, woman-section, learn how to work out or cook or make my (man's) home prettier, oh, hey Jade, nice camera, I like you, mh, hey Elizabeth, nice tits. And as said, this misrepresentation of men should rather be reason to speak out against it as well and not to silence or devalue the discussion on the issue of women in media.

Thanks to all the people here taking issue with her cleavage and the role women play in games in general and thanks especially for having the willingness to argue for why it’s important to take issue. Those guys are male power fantasies and though they show a lot of skin it's absolutely not the same as pretty much all half naked women in media. Especially your examples are very powerful, potent men, they rule, kill, fuck as they like. The half naked women are often weak, there to be saved, and even if they are powerful they tend to still be below some man in the food chain (Catwoman < Batman) and their nakedness isn't primarily there to show off their muscles (=power) but to look sexy (=please the male gaze).And as many pointed out, the whole Bioshock-cleavage-situation is not the crassest example, not by a long shot, just, this kind of sexualization is everywhere, and Bioshock is kind of the tripple-A posterchild of sophisticated video games and it's disheartening to see it contributing to the fucked up status quo instead of battling it. Here's a comic on Shortpacked! talking about 'false equivalence' and illustrating the problem in this line of argument. (Stumbled upon while reading about the fantastic Hawkeye Initiative.)

It's from the fantastic header-art by Dan Lee made for an Idle Thumbs interview with Ron Gilbert years ago.Also: this. (Happens when you google 'Dan Lee Idle Thumbs'. I think it's old and the IT-people lost their password for it or something, so beware.) Okay, the same google turned up the old site announcement from Jake and Spaff on Mojo - boy, this place is old. I'm old. Damn.