Llyranor

It is kind of sucky, to be honest. But not enough to ruin the game for me. I can live with the backtracking if it involves fun combat along the way. What about the platforming? Does it even dwell within the realm of frustration? Some of NG's platforming was just horrid, especially given the 3D camera.

Gears of War 2. 360 exclusive. November.

Memento mori.

Memento mori.

This isn't some joke. For your disrespect, I will reinterete. If somebody has something intellegent to say instead of stupid idiotic trash, come back, other wise shove your dissin head in Russia's nuclear sludge moron. Israel belongeds to Jews. The jews were enslaved and sent to egypt. With the prophet Moses they returned to their holy land which had been filled with pagans and sinners and retook it. Since then the Jews defended themselves in a non-stop holy war. I'm not a Jew but Israel hasn't existed just since 1948 and I'll be damned to hear otherwise. I'm sure Xard or Darth Hades would be happy to oblige. bat.gif I admit I won't think its funny when the second cold war comes on quite strong with a new soviet order and an allied china. COLD WAR II We need to reject China and Russia. Russia has always been a harsh nation from the Czars to Stalin and even today with their "democracy". Though not officially confirmed, Russia has been beleived to be breaking international pacts and treaties with tests and developments of weapons of mass destruction. (The U.S. is known to still mantain its stockpile and is even upgrading its nuclear arsenal.) NEW NUKES The U.S. needs to reafirm its postition as global leader by stabalizing the U.N. and calling for the Europeans to action, who are enjoying paradise with their EU and no major wars since WWII. Iran, Cuba, Iraq, Afganistan? The threat is Russia. The second major power is China. Who is weak? The U.S. Who lets the innocents die with not even condemnation? The U.S. Who no longer calls for inaction? The U.S. Who not only lets its country decay and fall behind "3rd world nations" on health care and other domestic issues? The U.S. Who has an incompetent leader? The U.S. Who allows China and Russia to go unchecked, funding, supporting terrorists, becoming economic tyrants? The USA. Who is letting their economy fall to deficit, inflation, outsoursing, over importing unsafe goods, and commiting suicide internationaly? The U.S. Today we are. Hopefully 2009 brings better fortune. Russia and/or China will challenge U.S. authority. UN authroity. The right to freedom and capitalism (with all its faults) will be challenged. A new age is beginning. The Second Cold War has begun. Likely you, your children, or your grandchildren will fight against China/Russia. Economically, Militarily, Politicaly, or by other means. The war has begun. Who will stand? The only strong nation in the world is Israel. And look at them. Caught in a massive holy war since biblical times, poor guys. They fight for right and anyone who says otherwise has a terrorist complex bat.gif and needs to see a shrink. The reasons why Europe lost the first series of real world wars (Crusades) is because the damn muslims are too well trained. The christians did not commit barbaric atrocity. The muslims murdered innocent jews, chrisitans, pagans and more so we responded in the MIddle Ages with Crusades to reclaim the holy land for peace. After our defeat, they stepped up with Jihad attacks. They think Allah is true and think they shall get virgins for murder. It is not war. It is killing innocents. They are cowards. Any muslims, russians, or chinese extremists who think they have power by murder and games (cold war) are true cowards. They're promises are false. Their people must open their eyes and begin the revolution! Under democracy, they could florurish! We could all live in peace. When we got tired of living together someone can blast off to another planet (By 2100 this may be very possible). I admire bush for his attemts, but Iraq is pointless now, similar to Vietnam (PS Reagan was the worst "good" president ever, terrible ****) REAGANS AN **** The world's militaryization is haywire fear and umbrellas (if u know what I mean). We must stop inaction, on the US and European part, as well as our other good allies out there

I admit I won't think its funny when the second cold war comes on quite strong with a new soviet order and an allied china. COLD WAR II We need to reject China and Russia. Russia has always been a harsh nation from the Czars to Stalin and even today with their "democracy". Though not officially confirmed, Russia has been beleived to be breaking international pacts and treaties with tests and developments of weapons of mass destruction. (The U.S. is known to still mantain its stockpile and is even upgrading its nuclear arsenal.) NEW NUKES The U.S. needs to reafirm its postition as global leader by stabalizing the U.N. and calling for the Europeans to action, who are enjoying paradise with their EU and no major wars since WWII. Iran, Cuba, Iraq, Afganistan? The threat is Russia. The second major power is China. Who is weak? The U.S. Who lets the innocents die with not even condemnation? The U.S. Who no longer calls for inaction? The U.S. Who not only lets its country decay and fall behind "3rd world nations" on health care and other domestic issues? The U.S. Who has an incompetent leader? The U.S. Who allows China and Russia to go unchecked, funding, supporting terrorists, becoming economic tyrants? The USA. Who is letting their economy fall to deficit, inflation, outsoursing, over importing unsafe goods, and commiting suicide internationaly? The U.S. Today we are. Hopefully 2009 brings better fortune. Russia and/or China will challenge U.S. authority. UN authroity. The right to freedom and capitalism (with all its faults) will be challenged. A new age is beginning. The Second Cold War has begun. Likely you, your children, or your grandchildren will fight against China/Russia. Economically, Militarily, Politicaly, or by other means. The war has begun. Who will stand? The only strong nation in the world is Israel. And look at them. Caught in a massive holy war since biblical times, poor guys. They fight for right and anyone who says otherwise has a terrorist complex bat.gif and needs to see a shrink. The reasons why Europe lost the first series of real world wars (Crusades) is because the damn muslims are too well trained. The christians did not commit barbaric atrocity. The muslims murdered innocent jews, chrisitans, pagans and more so we responded in the MIddle Ages with Crusades to reclaim the holy land for peace. After our defeat, they stepped up with Jihad attacks. They think Allah is true and think they shall get virgins for murder. It is not war. It is killing innocents. They are cowards. Any muslims, russians, or chinese extremists who think they have power by murder and games (cold war) are true cowards. They're promises are false. Their people must open their eyes and begin the revolution! Under democracy, they could florurish! We could all live in peace. When we got tired of living together someone can blast off to another planet (By 2100 this may be very possible). I admire bush for his attemts, but Iraq is pointless now, similar to Vietnam (PS Reagan was the worst "good" president ever, terrible ****) REAGANS AN **** The world's militaryization is haywire fear and umbrellas (if u know what I mean). We must stop inaction, on the US and European part, as well as our other good allies out there.

I agree with your posts (the later ones, excluding those regarding Tibet/Taiwan) in this thread. So long as nobody is claiming that we should face these challenges by means of pacifism. Everybody has the right to protect themselves, and often the threat of counter-attack is the only thing which keeps war and bullies at bay. I agree with the idea that the US is a potential time-bomb if any sort of Hitler-like lunatic figure were to rise with the support of the people. The thing is, so is China (and a few other places). And from my point of view, China is more likely to breed such a figure or mindset than America is (here is where democracy/communism come in - a democracy has more checks and balances in place to prevent such a thing). That's basically the general crux of why I think we should arm ourselves in preparation of a Chinese offensive. It probably (or hopefully) won't happen, but that's not a certainty. People always bring these arguments back to who has more missiles, but it's a lot more than that; allies, location, will, desperation, need, etc. Especially since you can only have so many missiles before the rest are gravy. I also agree with, I think it was Xard, who said that the more we integrate China into the world economy and politics, the less room they have to pursue offensive solutions. But by the same token, that could backfire by making China an economic superpower without making it a developed superpower (freedom, human rights, contentment, multiculturalism, etc) - a dire combination, IMHO.

Some do. Others don't. Taiwan just recently ousted Chen Shui-bian's pro-independence party in favor of the pro-unification KMT. As for Tibet, information is scarce but I'm sure that many ethnic Tibetans would like to be independent... Just as many ethnic <insert whatever> here would like to be independent of the nations under which they're listed. Does that change anything? The US didn't give independence to any of the people we absorbed and it's, once again, unreasonable to assume that other nations would do anything of the sort. In either case, forcing China on the issue is unlikely to make a difference, because Beijing would see through the hypocrisy and, based on the fact that we're trying to fragment their nation, cast us as a permanent threat with which there can be no compromise. Is that going to help the Tibetans and the Taiwanese, Sand? I doubt it. In the mean time, you might want to look at the example of Hong Kong as a case when people thought that returning to the Chinese polity would've meant massive oppression and the end of the world. Today, Hong Kong is doing just fine with its own system, and many of those who fled the island in fear of the Communists are now returning. If Taiwan were to return to China under the supervision of the UN, I don't think things would be very different. In fact, it'd likely resolve much of the tension in East Asia, which would be better for all involved.

I think that's definitely an arguable point. The article certainly stresses the fact that, right now, the Chinese do not pose a significant threat to us unless we invade, because their power projection capabilities are rather limited. But, as you say, they have all the prerequisites of being a military superpower - they're just not quite there, yet. In this respect, I think we have to accept the fact that China will become a major military power, and to look at this not from the perspective of an inevitable clash that fundamentally threatens American security (in which case the best strategy would be to, as some hawks suggest, preemptively bomb them back to the stone age), but from the more balanced principle that China has to militarize in response to its feelings of insecurity over US dominance and that this process does not necessarily have to result in war if we can adopt a position of mutual advantage. By reducing our threat to them, we can also reduce their threat to us. This is not the same as saying we should de-militarize (because, as I stated earlier, those who want peace must always prepare for war) or appease, but that there are decisions we can make that would provide assurances to the Chinese leadership regarding our intentions, which would then reduce their need to militarize against us, and in turn reduce their overall threat to us. Through the course of history, there have indeed been enemies between whom there can be no rapprochement, in which war is inevitable. However, it seems to me that in most cases, wars occur only for the lack of trying in preventing them. To understand the wants and fears of the other is the first step towards diplomacy. It is easy to label another nation as "evil" due to their unsavory activities and our own culture of fear, but when you get down to it, nearly every major country can be construed as a threat, especially the US. In which case, there are only two ways by which peace can exist: either one nation, through force of arms, pacifies every other nation and prevents them from ever developing their own militaries (which essentially establishes a superior-subordinate relationship that can easily lead to exploitation), or nations learn to reduce their threat level towards one another. The key point of my post was to show how much of a threat the US must necessarily pose to everyone else on the globe by virtue of our military superiority and power projection capabilities, which I think is a fact that most Amreicans do not even think of when they consider international relations and, in particular, the question of why other countries are always gearing up for war. After all, why do we?

I don't think any claims have been made to the effect. In truth, the thread probably veered off a bit more in the prescriptive direction than I intended. I am not so interested in saying what the US should do, as I am interested in explaining an aspect of modern international relations that I think undermines much of what certain politicians and think tanks in the US claim that they are trying to achieve. In short, I am suggesting that the idea that you can pacify the world through force is a politically flawed concept - because just as Americans refuse to have their guns taken away (because they don't trust the government), other countries will refuse to persist in a state of permanent military insecurity (because they don't trust the US). It is not unreasonable that other countries continue to militarize; they'd be foolish not to, and we are misguided in thinking that this means they must be ruled by belligerent regimes that seek to destabilize the world order. The truth is that even if they are ruled by completely benevolent regimes seeking only to mind their own businesses, US military lopsidedness and our history of interventionism will still conjure the spectre of fear in all but the most naive and "buddy-buddy" of governments. It is not so much that the US is seen as a ruthless expansionist aggressor (except by, perhaps, a few rogue regimes), but that the potential is there for the US to do enormous asymmetrical damage and there are no checks or balances in place - at the international level - that prevent us from doing so. Yes, Europe protests, but their protests have never stopped us. The truth is as stated in the article - we can annihilate any country in the world and have more than enough weapons to hold the rest of the world at bay. There are no balancing repercussions in place that would ensure the MAD that previously brought rival governments some degree of security; the modern American arsenal is possessed of no-retaliation first-strike capabilities. When the biggest guy on the block is sporting a set of bazookas, you will undoubtedly feel threatened and the need to possess counter-weapons of your own. This, I think, will be the defining trait of the 21st century. US military hegemony has brought an era of uneasy peace to the international scene, but it cannot last (some would say it never existed), because while having the US as the sole possessor of peerless military power is almost certainly better for stability than having multiple powers with equal militaries (which got us into the World Wars, as you will recall), the latter is the only state of the world that would satisfy people's psychological need for security. Roughly speaking, as our comparative technological advantage erodes, and our moral image falters, people in other parts of the world will increasingly realize that they no longer desire to be at the mercy of our military power, particularly as it is guided by leaders who, to the rest of the world, appear to be trigger-happy maniacs. And so we return to the age-old paradox: if you want peace, prepare for war. That, it seems to me, is set to become the modus operandi of the new millenium.

I was all happy that this thread reached second page, because I thought while I was at work we had got a lot of good arguments. I won't say whether I was disappointed in that regard or not. aiee.gif Nick perhaps was lured (and I don't use that verb with any malice against Sand) into making his argument seem more apologetic than it is. It's not about "burying our head in the sand and hoping China becomes peaceful and nice all by itself". It's not about, necessarily, right and wrong - is democracy right? Is it the best way to go? Is our version of freedom and representative government so good that we must impose it on everyone? Maybe, maybe not. Not the point. The point, very concisely, is: because our very conception of the 'proper' nation is founded on our ideas of what human rights, what good government, what freedom, is; anything that contravenes those ideas, or any nation that is founded on ideas and perspectives different to ours, is seen as at best ineffective, at worst criminal; and a threat to the ideas of our own nation. It is indeed naive to say in this day and age, that it doesn't matter how many people China kill in their own Tiananmen Squares, as long as its not American. That's not the point here. The point is just as we feel China's alternative logics of government are both morally offensive and politically dangerous, so do China feel that America's obsessions with self-expression and individual flagrance, its trade for what it might see as political stability for a Hollywood election fiasco that sees people with less than 50% vote get presidency and candidates dance, sing, cry and sell stickers for votes - morally offensive and politically dangerous. And if they do, you can say its wrong because your values are right and theirs is not; that's perfectly fine. But don't expect them to nod their head and say, oh, right, we should de-militarise, we should cooperate with US every step of the way, what we are doing is unreasonable. And - this is what Azarkon wants to say, too, I think - because America is a lot more outspoken, effective and active about imposing its own beliefs on others than any other country, other countries have much more reason to fear America than America needs fear other countries. The fear is much more immediate within the radicals of Iran than for the Americans that 'fear' China or North Korea. Which makes perfect sense. It may not be 'right', but it makes sense. That's the distinction here. There's no use replying to such an argument by saying "Yeah, but they're [evil/anti-free/not doing it right/breaching fundamental ideas about government]". Of course they are, in our epistemology, in our worldview! But just marching forward with our worldview and kicking everything else aside in its path, while righteous and brave, is not the best solution. Evidence: terrorism of this decade. Edit: finally, when we are confronted with evidence of US being the 'bad boy' in things like freedom or human rights, it is all too easy to say "we're still the best at being free" and point to Tiananmen Square or whatnot. But just like getting an A in your maths test doesn't excuse you for blowing up the parents' car engine the night before, those pieces of evidence must be recognised (without letting them get to us in some big US=SUPERBAD conspiracy theory). We have to understand that, while, in our view, we recognise no country can be perfect and US is damn good in some respects, in others' view, where the US is forcing a worldview and logic of government they don't agree with on them by force and discourse, those pieces of evidence fuel the fire very well - and understandably so. It's about understanding, Sand. It's not about "keeping things simple" for yourself and charging on until there are no more enemies left; that is an endless, unwinnable battle where other methods might do a little better.

Nick would have us bury our heads in the sand and hope China sees that peace is the answer after all. And maybe they will one day - when they starts treating their own citizens with dignity, I'll believe there's hope for China. I mean, why don't you go and tell Taiwan that the constant political threats, alterations to their policies to authorise violence against Taiwan if they opt for independence, scheduled 'test' flights of fighter jets over the skies of Taiwan, etc have nothing to do with war and that China only wants peace? It is a basic human right to be allowed to defend oneself. And the only countries people in the Western world perceive as a threat are those which treat their own citizens poorly. The onus is not on us to change.

Certainly. But so is the view that other forms of government are inherently evil and therefore threatening to the American way of life. If the Chinese are indeed a threat to American security, they have not yet acted directly on that threat. On the other hand, we have acted on our threat to Beijing many times, and directly. If we were to enter into a contest of "who started it," I think the Chinese would win handidly, Sand. And it's in that context wherein my question makes sense. Don't get me wrong - the world doesn't operate on the principle of sympathy. But mutual advantage, now - that's something nations can stand by, and a critical step to achieving mutual advantage is to understand what the other side want from you, and what they fear from you, because those are the two fundamental questions between groups of people.

By casting others as threats, you necessarily make yourself a threat to them. Mutual threat, which leads to war, then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. On the other hand, if you do not threaten them, would they threaten you? Which came first - the chicken or the egg?

And that's the sort of thinking that, ultimately, leads the world into fearing us, and which perpetuates the cycle of violence. Think about it, Sand - if the US presented itself as an existential threat to China (or Russia, or Iran, or w/e) by cutting off all relations, do you really think they would respond by becoming democratic? History has proven the opposite - in times of fear and isolation, people gravitate towards dictatorship, fascism, and tyranny, because those are the forces that guarantee security (at the price of freedom). That is not to say, and I think many economists make this mistake, that doing the opposite (befriending China & giving it FTN status) will produce democracy. But positioning yourself as a threat certainly worsens the situation unless you're willing to act on your threat, to overthrow the government by military intervention and then to occupy, rebuild, and reshape the country under your rule. Since the US is not prepared to do that for the vast majority of the world, would you not agree that threatening to do so can only encourage the sort of paranoid thinking that leads countries and peoples in the direction of authoritarianism? Aren't we working against our own interests, in that case? Something to think about.

How is repressing democracy a threat to the US, unless the goal of the US was to impose democracy on the rest of the world? Do you see the way this argument flows? If China is a threat for being a dictatorship, then the US is certainly a threat for every dictatorship in the world. That being the case, the authoritarian world must necessarily unite against the US. There are no ifs or buts, in that case - the two cannot coexist. Thus, we sew the seeds of our own apocalypse. But is a democratic nation, then, not a threat to the US - and therefore does not feel threatened in turn? I think quite a few countries in the world would argue against that. Starting with Russia.

It is precisely opinions like these that reinforce, I think, what I said with regards to why the rest of the world feels the need to defend against the US. Yes, you fear them, but how much do they fear you? After all, China is about as much of a military threat as a man with a harpoon (if you read the article) trying to up against an Aegis battlecruiser. Yet, our political opinion is that they are a major threat that we should "probably" act preemptively against. Now imagine that you're Chinese (or in particular, a part of the Chinese political elite). What do you think your country should do, given American hints at belligerence? I wouldn't be surprised if you supported someone who pledged to defend China against the "imperial threat" of the US, to ensure that China is never again threatened by any foreign power. That's how Mao took power, and how wars begin.

In this respect, I think Nick is right to fear that this argument would fall back to the standard "but America will never be fascist, that's ridiculous! We have checks and balances! We have democracy!", which is of course the standard, easy way to think about all this, and something that I want to avoid. Thus, I'm going to preempt it by making sure everyone understands what I mean. It's not: America is the greatest threat to the modern world. We're the next Nazi Germany. GWB = Hitler 2.0!" But: America's military supremacy scares the crap out of everyone else, and our recent actions do not serve to placate their fears. It's only natural, then, that the world would re-militarize - because nobody would want their lives to be in our hands.

I was hesitant to come in and post but I think we can all agree that America becoming the next Nazi Germany is pretty laughable. The statements in op are horribly misguided and skewed. America would never attack someone like China because we are just itching for them to open the flood gates of democracy so we can invade with our businesses of mass profitability. While wars are highly profitable to a lot of people we can't constantly be in them becuase it puts a lot of strain on our economy and socio political system so another war, unless openly provoked, is highly unlikely while we finish up in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's not so much that we want to control the world, thats stupid, we just want to make as much money as possible. It's as simple as that and as much as you think you're righteous words about these poor oppressed people around the world are true, they want the exact same thing. You say whats to stop America from rising up and militarizing to control the world but whats to stop any other country? I mean Germany is a small country and after World War 1 they were absolutely and thoroughly destroyed yet they came back to be one of the biggest powerhouses in the world. It's clear that any country with the might and will can do that, you only choose America becuase of some sick delusion. Fighting the entire world through military conflict isn't profitable, it's much easier through diplomacy and business. Not much more than that. If the next Adolf Hitler ended up getting elected president of the US, it wouldn't suddenly create a Nazi regime. That type of jump in logic fails to account for all the checks and balances we have in our government. The president really isn't as powerful as people seem to think he is. You have an extremely complex political system at work here, and it's amazing that it keeps on functioning as well as it does, but the reality is that it is extremely resistant to corruption (or some may say there is so much corruption that it all cancels out tongue.gif )

http://atimes.com/atimes/China/JB12Ad01.html (the article deals with US vs. China, but it's not that particular comparison that I want to focus on) Think about it from the perspective of someone living in another country, one perhaps not on the best of terms with the US. The US has enough nuclear weapons - and conventional weapons, for that matter - to destroy any country or set of countries in the world. The only thing holding back the US is American democracy, which in recent years have produced such great presidents as George W. Bush and candidates like John McCain. Now, the Americans don't seem like a serious people (at least not from our popular culture), and they don't seem like they want to take over the world - but are you really going to risk your life, and potentially the life of your people on the notion that Americans, ignorant and content as they currently are, will never fall under the sway of someone who did have ambition? What's to prevent, in other words, an American Adolf Hitler, who might ride in on the coattails of an economic depression? It only takes one mistake of the US political system to send the entire world spiraling into chaos. It only takes one real threat to the untested, pampered, and sheltered Americans for a demagogue to rally the masses. There would be no shortage of scapegoats - the Pentagon invents them as a matter of course, to justify our inflated military spendings - and while the Americans are horrible at occupation, there is no reason why they must occupy. The Americans have been known to shoot first and ask questions later, after all. They don't seem like people you can reason with, once the fighting's started. So, what would you do, rationally, in this situation? Well, in the short term, you know that you must pamper the Americans. Ally with them. Lower their sense of distrust, their reason to fear you. But in the long term? You don't want to sacrifice yourself for the Americans forever, and no amount of pampering will appease a truly belligerent leader, anyhow. In the long term you have no choice but to try and equal the Americans - for as long as they have an overwhelming military advantage, to the point where they can destroy you without you being able to touch them, you can never sleep easy. It's like living next doors to an alcoholic gun collector in Detroit. He might bid you good morning everyday and invite you to his house, but those nights when he holds them NRA parties... You're never quite sure whether those loud noises you hear are from his boom box or ... Or something else. I believe that Americans are better than most when it comes to internalizing what we fear. Our political culture is based, in some sense, on threat politics, so we're quite familiar with it. So, I surmise, it should not be difficult to understand what fear does to a people. The fear of Islamic terrorists, however small of a threat they are to us, sent us into two wars in the Middle-East. We continuously play up the notion of a worldwide Islamic Revolution, wherein Islam would conquer all of Europe and send the world back to the twelth century. We belabor ceaselessly the point that the "liberal West" is "blind" to the threat of foreign immigrants, and that it will be too late before we have the guts to respond - another apocalyptic war, we tell ourselves, is inevitable. Such an active doomsday imagination we have, such a negative notion of other people... That it almost begs the question, How would we act, if we were in their shoes? If Islam, or China, or Russia, were in control of the world, and not us? What if they had the power to annihilate us without us being able to do a thing about it, and the only thing we could do is hope that they will not, despite the fact that their politicians and media sources are continuously playing up the "threat" that we pose? Such a scenario, I argue, is inconceivable to the modern American mind. We do not know fear as the rest of the world knows it. Thus, we do not understand why they would ever feel the need to militarize. In the eternal words of Donald Rumsfeld, "Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment [in the military]?" I can just imagine what the Chinese equivalent to the Secretary of Defense must have thought when he heard those words: "Indeed, what do we have to fear, but fear itself?"

The demo was nice in terms of my first real exposure to the series. Too easy, but I don't expect the real game to be so. My main concerns is in terms of what players have been saying re: backtracking through the same areas multiple times, and some awkward platforming/puzzle elements. How much does that suck?

(jp)

http://ds.ign.com/articles/852/852731p1.html Lots of screenies in the images section. The 2D art is good stuff. !!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Co-op, thanks.

Get Ace Combat 6, losers.