LadyCrimson

Great, now I went and Googled it... I had chicken pox when I was 17. I'm looking forward to the day it comes back as shingles that'll pop up all over my back or something, probably when I'm 60. That'll be fun times! Not.

I barely remember most story animated cutscenes. Always liked the Tombraider1, Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 ones however, and the little convo-scene bits in Kotor 2 were fun. Game intro for Dungeon Keeper 1 still my fave, although mostly for the music (music is often why I remember such things) ... but it might explain my disdain for Knights/Paladins. Myst 1 intro, for the time, was great because it was quite intriguing, with that opening bit and then voice narration. And then of course there's the end of Doom 1.

Yes, I would like to shoot guns with Timothy Olyphant, please. Even if they use fake guns (no clue). http://www.omaze.com/experiences/justified-olyphan

So, I don't keep up with reddit or his YouTube uploads (forgot he had one...), so pardon if everyone's already seen it 20 times, but I had to post it. Also, now I'm caught on up on his silly YT one-liner vids ("put that cookie down!" ), the stogie and the tank, and a couple long reddit AMA's. Which was all awesome.

Not a "movie", but a stop-animation short called Junk Head 1. Anyone else watch this? I came across it randomly (tho I might've heard something about it a while back). For my tastes it's pretty weird, but kinda cool...I'm not sure I entirely "get" it (heheh), but animation is quite amazing, imo. Although there's this one tiny moment where I went "wtf? ewww!" lol. The guy spent years making it by himself - he has the full 30min. version on YouTube now and he's trying to raise money for a sequel. The first 10 minutes: (full version is on his YT profile page too) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc2i4pFlqYo

I've had "harpooning" melee-class abilities in other games. It can be wickedly fun. Is Shaman the healer class? I wonder if you could play with all mages...used to go 3 mage/Liches+1healer in the later M&M's. X might be a little too difficult (for me) to do something like that tho.

I used to be like that. Had baby-name books and thesaurus on the desk that I'd refer to, even. But these days I just pick from a few I use over and over or use phonetic spellings of some variation of "Ihavetopickanameandcantthinkofone" phrases. Eventually Ubi will likely have enough Uplay games (that I'm interested in) to make installing Uplay worth the bother and I'll cave...just not quite yet. In the mean time ... think I'll look out for a Let's Play to skim through a bit.

It's not the Captain without his hat. Edit: finally ate lunch, will now travel.

Well, I'd have to watch it again, maybe I missed something. My memory goes like this tho: The two guys are discussing it in front of a plane. The one says "Would you tell him?" The other goes "Right before the jump?" First guy looks at the ground kinda going "umm..." - nothing clear cut there. Guy could've left the letter and jacket hoping for what happened to happen, to happen. Not sure that was clear cut either. But certainly could have been unintentional...was just assuming since the previous scene made it seem like the first guy wanted to tell him but could've been hesitant to directly because of his convo with the other dude. At any rate, I'm not trying to bash the show or say it's a bad show. It just doesn't seem to work for the way my memory works I guess. I'm the sort who remembers there's a big cherry tree and a picket fence on the street corner but won't remember the name of the street, what a guy at a party was wearing but not their name or specifically what they said during a 20 minute convo, and I'm utterly terrible at remembering/learning from dialogue alone (listening to dry lectures, for example - won't recall a thing...). I need more visual representation of a character/more time with a character to make them resonate in my brain outside of knowing what role they serve in the plot (main chr, guy-who-lost-his-brother, commander-guy, etc). Which doesn't have to be "action," but dozens of faces running by at lightning speed with nothing for me to latch onto other than people telling me their names once (exaggeration, but you get my meaning I hope) and I can get lost.

NW:Online -- oh cool, the Event companion isn't BoP. Now I can buy one for cheap and send it to all alts for the collection point and then sell it back again. New Dread Companion in Zen shop - I'd do the same thing (buy, sell on AH for diamonds, reconvert diamonds to Zen) ... only it's not actually in the Zen shop. Fail.

Is it technically difficult to patch a game piecemeal? I'm rather tired of games that make you download 1GB of data every week to fix only a few minor things...obviously one has to DL's a whole main file or something. Bah...I must just be in an annoyed-mode...all these little things as I go through my morning are bugging me where they normally wouldn't. Time to get some lunch and go for a walk around the duck pond to decompress or something.

I'd like to try it, but I'm going to have to get over my dislike for UPlay - or rather, the idea of yet another thingie that I need to have installed just to play a game itself. I'm getting too old-timer cranky about such things....don't know if I can. But I might someday. And I'm glad it seems to a fun/enjoyable game.

I remember the plot point of the guy who loses his brother. Doesn't mean I recognize his face when he shows up again outside of that, which I think he may have. Even the guy who had the chat with the German prisoner, if he shows up again in some ditch, I don't immediately recognize him as being that guy who talked to the German prisoner. It's possible it's because so many of them look and sound sorta the same, to me, under the dirty faces and the helmets. A lot of them aren't very distinctive outside of the plot telling me they're distinctive via some device. Also, a character isn't interesting just because the plot tells me he should be via others talking about it. Two guys talk about a letter with the news about this dead brother and wonder whether to tell the guy - 30 second scene. So (I assume, we aren't told/shown) the one soldier arranged for the guy to "accidentally" find the letter - 30 second scene. There's a brief moment of "sorry, it's sad, you ok" - 15 second scene. And then later after the drop, suddenly the brother is going postal, new guy goes "what's his problem?" and another goes "lost his brother." It's bad characterization/motivation sequencing (when I knew almost nothing about the guy to begin with).

All games should have purring panthers to keep one company, carry your extra item trash, and to summon skeletons for you.

Still Torchlight2 .. determined to actually finish the game this time (I'm in late Act3 now). Playing the game, however, has made me realize how much I've grown bored of games where 98% of the game is so easy you can play it in your sleep, whilst the occasional boss fights are almost one-shotters the first time you do it (before you're aware of their attack mechanics). I'd like a little more difficulty consistency throughout. To be fair, I am playing on Normal, but I did play on a harder difficulty once and the first couple of Acts were barely any harder...and still has the issue of a few fights being ridiculous while the rest is pretty mundane. That all said ... I love the Outlander and running around with my dual pistols and pet attack-panther, who for some reason has about 4x my own chrs health and resists. And can summon skeletons. A panther who summons skeletons. It is to giggle. Also, sometimes my vex summon who "pushes" enemies away from me gets glitched and remains summoned forever, unless I die and respawn in town. It's supposed to only last a minute or so each cast. No idea what triggers it. But whatever, it's funny.

But see, that picture of chr. heads doesn't tell me who those characters are, and why I should care more for them than I would for a sidewalk extra in ID4. Outside of Winters, Nixon, Compton and the trainer from Friends, everyone else is just a blank face who shows up on screen for 20 seconds then disappears, is shot in some frantic battle, or survives battle and eventually shows up on screen again for another 20 seconds. Occasionally they sit around a fire or a table and have a brief convo. There's the chr. who had a chat with the German prisoner who was from the States that stood out as a scene, but not much else so far. I did, however, spot Andrew Scott early on (guy who plays Moriarty on Sherlock) which gave me a giggle. But then he croaked so that was the end of that. Perhaps in another few episodes (seen 5 now) I'll change my mind....but eh. I normally like war/soldier types of stories and I do like BoB ok, but I guess I prefer my heavy war tales with a bit more to emotionally connect with (Saving Private Ryan has a few issues, especially the 2nd half, but it was a great film imo). Otherwise I'd rather see just a pure documentary.

Looks like a cross between Skyrim and Mount & Blade. I do like that it's set in a more realistic medieval age vs. dragons and elves and all of that, and I think the relative success of M&B shows there's a market for it, although how huge a market (as far as studio backers are concerned) I wouldn't know. But like someone else said, I'm not usually all that into first person for this sort of combat/RPG game either. Certainly didn't like Skyrim/ES series FPS viewpoint/combat, at any rate. Mount & Blade's horseback riding was awesome, the only game I've ever liked mounted combat in - if that aspect in this game is at least as engaging as M&B, might be worth a look if/when it comes out. Unfortunately I'm generally still burnt out on spending before a product is made/finished ... but I wish them luck.

While it wasn't by my character's hand, I felt even worse about Cain in Diablo3. And it ticked me off even more because I felt like Cain was so iconic to series. Oddly, Wirt's peg leg in Diablo2 just made me giggle. Guess I didn't like him enough, the over-priced jerk.

The only reasons I Google a "famous celeb" are: 1-I saw them in a movie and I want to know what other work they've done because I either know I've seen them before and can't place where I've seen them before, or they impressed me and I just want to see more of their work. 2-I'm trying to look up a film but I can't remember the name of the film, but do remember who the big star was. 3-I want to know how to spell their hard-to-spell name so I can cut and paste it into something I'm writing. 4-I'm really bored and a funny YouTube video led me to wonder who the heck is this person/group/whatever that the 'net is poking fun with 5-they're really handsome and I just want a wallpaper of their gorgeous mug for my desktop. Other than that, I don't pay much attention to celeb news. Course, when I was 13, I would've loved to have the internet to stalk read about my celeb crushes. Sadly all I had was the monthly periodicals at the library and a Xerox machine to make fuzzy blk & wht copies of articles, using a lot of nickels. The stone ages, man, the stone ages.

Missed this post earlier and just wanted to comment that I had a discussion on another forum about exactly that aspect of male/female sexualization, right down to the "don't tell me Twilight isn't objectifying men" part. Anyway...I think it's fair to say that no one wants to feel constantly objectified, whatever that means to the individual. Empathy or at least having a certain level of acceptance that negative objectification can be and does mean different things to different people is key to finding some middle ground where it hopefully doesn't become simply an "either-or" scenario.

Our winter has been pretty dry, which if that also translates into a weak "mt. snow pack," by Spring they'll be talking about drought worries again. Endless California cyclic concern. Sometimes they still get enough snowpack, however, even if the rain down here is sparse. Today I stayed up far too late again. Not that doing so has ever been terribly unusual for me, but I certainly find as I get older that I feel mentally better when I get to sleep a bit earlier/get up earlier. Decades of habit and natural body rhythms are hard to break sometimes. Even when I manage to keep to an earlier schedule for a while, a single very late night has it all fly right out the window again. It's like being a booze addict who can never drink even a single drink. Bah!

But see, that's the part I really don't understand. Isn't the other side, that insists upon leaving certain body image art alone/inclusive, also a "very vocal minority?" I mean, it's not like I consider the postings of people on forums representative of the game buying population as a whole, in either direction. Most consumers still likely don't ever bother to frequent forums. If I were to guess (and note it's only me guessing), I'd suspect the actual majority would be more like GhostofAnkain (or myself, really, when it comes down to it) - where they really don't care too much one way or another, because for them, while options are always great, in the end what a character looks like isn't what actually defines whether they want to play a game or whether they think a game is good or bad. It does seem to me that there hasn't been enough research on what type of games this "50% are women" statistic that gets tossed around are actually playing, however. It wouldn't surprise me, tho, if RPG's are one of the genres that women tend to choose and/or that they're starting to play a lot more variety than many seem to think. At any rate, if the companies feel the female audience is growing, and they can make more money by trying to attract them further into the fray, so to speak, well...yeah. It's going to happen. If they later discover it's not bringing them more profits, they'll eventually try something else instead. Happens all the time. So if y'all are actually right, instead of just believing/convincing yourselves you're right, and it's just a vocal tiny minority, some of who never even play the games they're protesting against, all you have to do is wait for the companies to realize it.

It's late and I must be a little punchy, because for some reason that immediately brought to mind the famous Aliens "build a campfire, sing some songs" quote. With the way characters in the series come and go, sometimes with zero introduction at all, I think even a chart would fail to de-confuse.

I still don't understand why some seem to feel so threatened because some games decide to try out not having big boobies etc. (that's rhetorical, btw, don't have to try to explain it, because I still likely won't understand it). eg, if it's just fantasy and people shouldn't care/get up in arms if there are giant boobies/massive cleavage then the opposite seems like it should apply as well - it's just fantasy and people shouldn't care/get up in arms if there aren't giant boobies/massive cleavage. See how that works? Mainstream artistic preferences - they change all the time, and of course during any period of change, some "oldtimers" often don't like the change, because we always want what we're used to having, not what new generations may want to have. I definitely have a lot of "oldtimer" whinging about a lot of things over the years but that's neither here or there. As far as, specifically, giant boobies and wasp waists go (or the male equivalent) the simple solution for games, at least, if game companies are really concerned about it, is to always have a character editor/sliders in the game that allow people to enlarge or minimize the breast/waist size of their character, even if the face is static. Or if actual sliders aren't doable, a few body choices to choose from (same head/face, different body style). Of course, this means that the game has to have the funding and art team/development time available, and so on. But as I said, that's the simple solution, not necessarily the most expedient one - perhaps we'll move into an era where game development may decide it's necessary to allot more funds/time to more multiple art choices, if not always, at least more often, in order to stop the issue from being such a constant issue. Or at least, that'd be nice if that turned out to be the case. Probably won't be tho. Oh well.

Thanks alan ... I was wanting to reply to Bester but also didn't want to derail the news thread quite that much. No. You're trying to rationalize instinctual behavior, which is a frequent amateur mistake. Females' lives are built around their instinct to attract the strongest of males and get their sеmen. It may sound chauvinist, but I mean no offense. It's just that it's really all there's to it. Heh...not like I'm not familiar with that line of thought, since I've used it in my pessimistic moments re: the essentially unchanged nature of humankind. And yes, despite our intellect we are still instinctual creatures who react without thought to certain stimuli. Fight or flight, fear of unknown/different, and of course the oo-la-la. But the nature of humanity is not always the same thing as the culture of humanity, and that's where using that as an argument against change falls apart. People wanting/wishing to be as attractive as possible to find mates, natural thing and I doubt you'd find anyone to argue against that. What is culturally considered attractive, however, is ever changing and is definitely not ruled by instinct alone, but by whatever is the fad at the time. People's interests change, on a cultural level. At one time pudgy women were the height of sexual attractiveness for some. For others it was an exposed ankle. For still others it could be the bone in their perfectly shaped nose or how long their artificially-stretched-from-birth-via-metal-rings neck is. I believe the objection to objectification sometimes (or often) stems less from an objection to sexuality itself and more from how unreasonable that objectification is vs. any reality of what's reasonably physically possible. To most of our "modern" culture, for example, something like forcing girls to bind/literally cripple their feet as a pinnacle of beauty is/seems barbaric, because it's not something reasonable/humane to expect people to do in order to feel like they're attractive/have social worth. While fantasy Barbie-Doll proportions isn't in the same league as crippling one's feet, as this culture of ours evolves and changes, it's not necessarily unreasonable to think that a culture might eventually deem it unfavorable to use such as a socially-influential measurement of worth. Or such objections may end up petering out and going nowhere. Not for me to say. At any rate, just because we have roots that stem from instinct, in the long run that's usually a poor excuse for justifying not even attempting social/cultural change, if and when a time comes that enough people in a cultural group want change. ...myself, I'm still waiting for the day that flat feet and broad, short-fingered hands are considered the height of female sexiness. I'll have it made then. Never mind that I already have a mate. I can't wait, because then I'll still be considered super-sexy when I'm 65!