Tigranes

And what a splendid monkey he was, old bean.

This is not intended to be a 'told-you-so' comment - but I remember when we had these discussions even 6 months ago or so, and there wasn't as much animosity against DLCs. In particular, when people worried that 'first day DLCs' would become standard and companies would deliberately hold things back or set things aside to make extra money, there were a lot of voices saying that's a bit paranoid. Unfortunately, I think we can all see that that's exactly what's happening. Maybe it was right to give DLCs a break back then, but I think it's definitely going in the wrong direction and needs a lot of criticism. By the way, the reason this will work? The more fragmented your product line becomes, the more effective you become at saturating the market, in other words covering every permutation of audience need and desire. It's a very common sense capitalistic trend that has occured in many other industries in the last 50 years. It's just that in the physical world, this is balanced out by the costs of localisation, distribution, etc; for digital DLC files, this cost offset is nowhere as large (though still present, including things such as an exponential potential for bugs that we are seeing with, say, Dragon Age), so the customer gets boned a lot more. Think about it. For anybody here that's bought a DLC, they've probably laughed at some other DLC for being overcharged and frivolous, but have found a few *they* think are good value. Criss-cross that with players that are so keen on FO3 they'll pay exorbitant fees to get everything; history nuts that will pay the money to get the right range of NTW units; immersion/fanfiction lovers that will gladly pay for dress-up or april fools DLC. I imagine it's quite profitable already, and companies are working hard to establish this as the norm.

I don't think you could even get it up that high deliberately? I decided to go for King's Bounty: Armoured Princess and pass on DA: Awakening. Lot more fun, Dragon Age burned me out but KB still has a while to go. BG trilogy run next, it's been over a year, which is probably the longest break I've ever had since they came out. Aerie thing is probably a cleric/mage bug. But I wouldn't know, she's such a whiny sack of pathetic I never take her.

Yeah, I've always wondered about this. Gromnir's explanation is the most likely, but how many Japanese women these days (not even, say, 10-20 years ago) would actually do that instead of lashing out? I really have no idea. The mentality doesn't really have a parallel in Korean society, well, nowhere near as much anyway.

You don't. You do need a robust and at least fairly independent press to have a good chance at fair and transparent elections. Yet the truth is that many countries in the world now sport illiberal democracies, where a democratic system of government does not necessarily come together with a liberal society. You could simply write these off as 'half-democracies' or 'not-rly-democracies' still in development that have yet to be put right, and theoretically speaking you'd be correct. The thing is, though, there seems to be a trend towards these illiberal democracies as a viable option for various countries... Venezeula might count as one, I think. i.e. countries which have the democratic election part down, but aren't so keen about following that up with free press, etc.

Exactly. I think, keeping things really simple, the Japanese reputation as the nation of perverts amongst internet users & gamers is a bit unfair. re. MamW: virtual killing is much easier to stomach cause we kill other things all the time, just not humans. But we never really go out and rape.

Actually, a democracy is not necessarily liberal. It's just that the particular model of democracy the West has adopted and thinks everyone else should adopt happens to be a liberal democracy.

I never said this was acceptable. I'm not disputing whether Rapelay might be acceptable, i'm looking at the inconsistencies and differences between the media's/our response to these things. Again it's about a spectrum of sexuality. Following on from HK, we get a disproportionate level of attention to the extremities of Japanese pornography because it is extreme, and because it is Japanese. I don't think what I'm saying is particularly controversial, it's not like I'm saying it would be okay if it were American (thereby rendering your query irrelevant). I kind of said this in a particularly stupid way before, though.

I got that too, you can just console yourself in.

I bet she thought Fallout 3 was best in the series (It's on)

OK, I can see how that sounds retarded. I still have a long way to go to beat records though. To clarify, of course it's not the 'same thing', they're as much the same thing as murder & two babies fighting over the toy truck. I'm just saying hentai/rapelay/etc gets the kind of derision and criticism it justly deserves... but only because it's from a different culture and it's so extreme. Maybe that makes more sense? That might answer Krezack too.

Take out hentai and you still have a lot of equally damaging and disgusting things available to the Western porn purveyors, I would suspect. Besides, how do you know there aren't any Japanese pornographic comics with 'artistic value'? You're falling prey to a very narrow and restricted viewpoint about what's coming out of Japan based on the same media reports you deride. I just think there is a really skewed perspective out there that says, Japanese are just screwed up perverts, that really ignores what in fact is a very general and very universal spectrum of sexuality and sexual pleasure that is one of the key components of modern Western media.

Sometimes, petty dictators are a lot more effective at getting a country up on the ground. Not sure if that's the case with Venezuela, but there it is.

I'm not sure what your point is. If you're trying to make an ironic point then you've got no ground to stand on, if you're asking where does this game sit in the spectrum of acceptability, well, answer should be obvious. *shrug* Of course, everyone's response to RapeLay is "those screwed up Japanese wtih their screwed up fantasies", but I actually see all this idiocy with boobie cards and XBOX achievements for bagging a chick as the same thing. Some Japs just took it further earlier than the Americans/etc.

Actually, those are pretty awesome. The paper houses are much more comfortable to live in than blocks of concrete, because it's cool during the summer and built-in central heating from the ground up means it's warmer than anything in the winter. Not so sure about wooden pillows myself, that's before my time.

Obsidian has nothing to do with Hunted, it's a partnership between InXile and Bethesda.

Sounds like a question designed to stop you from getting a good answer.

Fair enough. To me faith is simply a different regime of truth, and you have to work just as hard to find answers and keep on searching for answers. Obviously, in a lot of cases, people don't take faith that way, though. But I'd consider efforts at ID the former.

Unanswerable through scientific means. Slowtrain was discussing the issue in terms of those who are willing to use means other than the scientific method to identify truths in their lives. You are just bludgeoning that distinction entirely and effectively claiming science = all truth, all logic, all value. I'd suggest that that is a fairly silly exercise, unless you really want to champion the all-powerful right of science or something.

To everyone that says how the army is not a rite of passage for manhood, I must protest most strongly: learning how to work the system is one of the most important survival skills for the modern adult. I'm not joking. I see people that get boned all the time because they didn't play enough adventure games in their youth. This is what I'm most envious of, actually. I'm not a pile of putrid fat or anything, but I genuinely think if I was forced to leave civilisation for a few months and just work on physical training my life would be better for it. But how long did that last, for you? My thoughts on this are pretty hypocritical, I have to admit. In general I wouldn't endorse conscription, but considering that I wasn't too far away from having had to go to the army, I actually think something short, like 6 months, would probably be good for me for the pros that Meshugger suggested. We're forced to a lot of things in life as it is; being 'forced' doesn't automatically mean 'bad', that's a very limited way of thinking. But, uh, I'd probably fight tooth and nail to avoid going to the army, I'd hate it while I was there.

I have just watched Crossing, a Korean movie. It is one of the very, very few films - inside or outside Korea - that depict the life of North Koreans today with any degree of accuracy. This movie tracks a North Korean mine worker with a wife and kid. His (childhood?) buddy is permitted to do limited trade with China, and is even rich enough to have his own television set, but the protagonist's own life is pretty squalid. The wife is diagnosed with malnutrition and he must ask his friend for a favour to secure medicine, but the party finds out on his dealings (Western booze, bibles) and the family 'disappears'. The protagonist so sets out on his own, and manages to just make it past the Chinese border. But his efforts are thwarted by a police crackdown and he is forced to seek asylum at a German (yeah... not sure) embassy, and there is transported to South Korea. There he manages to get a sympathetic ear or two and aid workers promise to find his family, but the wife has already died of neglect. The son, on his own, had tried to cross to China himself but had gotten caught by North Korean border patrols, then sent to a disciplinary centre (i.e. a bad prison). The aid workers get him out and smuggle him across the border to Mongolia, and contact the protagonist dad, who takes the plane there to meet him. But the protagonist is held at the airport for carrying suspicious pills (vitamins he wanted to feed the son), and the son, who only just escapes the Chinese patrols, fails to find any help in the desert and is eventually found dead. As far as I know the movie is quite very accurate, and it's really a very rare look at your everyday North Korean, staying away from Kim Jong-Il. Awesome stuff. There should be an English version... edit: heh. so much info. Yes, there is an English version.

Uh.. no? Thanks pop for the details, sounds pretty awesome. Pity you couldn't play it yourself, though. How was the framerate / loading times, and how were the sounds you could hear it 'live'?

http://gamecorner.pl/gamecorner/1,86013,77...em_autorow.html 20 minutes gameplay. Looks like the first part of the game. Graphics look purty enough to me, lots of bloom but not too bad, not as bad as Risen. The faces are a bit odd and animations are poor, though, Geralt looks... weird, and the sorceress chick looks plastic, like that Miranda chick in ME2 (judging by screens anyway). Combat looks like Witcher 1 but flashier, with more vibrantly coloured slashes and more outrageous animations - lots of kung-fu leaping going on. Which, together with enemies moving around, means Geralt hits invisible walls while jumping and the whole thing looks a bit ridiculous. I don't know why they felt the need to inject extra EXTREME to the moves, compared to the supposed motion capture of a real swordsmaster for the first one this is comical. Still, it remains Witcher combat in the core. Dialogue & voice acting seem fine enough, English translation is written pretty well. Looks like it's going to be an interesting RPG like last time round.

It remains compulsory in South Korea, and pretty much by now a well-accepted 'rite of passage' for young men. i.e. it's where you learn to live a disciplined life, appreciate what you have, and get some good hard physical training in. Additionally it primes you for social / work life as an adult afterwards as it hooks you up with a lot of useful connections, you learn how to obey orders and be part of a well oiled machine (and to work it for your own benefit). It's generally understood that the army makes boys men and as long as it's a necessary evil (through, y'know, North Korea), it's not so bad. Of course, these views are beginning to slowly change these days, as you might expect. Military service is also getting shorter and shorter, the physical training and discipline not as iron-clad and a wider range of options available for reduced service (i.e. ones where you commute as opposed to being removed from civilisation for ~18 months). Got out of it myself as I'm a NZ citizen, not sure what I would have done otherwise, as I'm your typical humanities man, can't survive on regular schedules or getting up before the sun, reasonably fit and healthy but not one for man-muscle pumping. I expect I would have accepted my fate in the face of no reasonable alternatives, have a very **** time and make it out alive.

All that in one year? Man, it must feel like Cliffnotes at times. Must be a big challenge to teach. Anyway, this thread is starting to sound like some sort of American election debate, so run!