Aristes

Fanatics should scare everyone. I've seen some pretty scary fanatical people all my life. Thumping on about how anyone who disagrees with them is the cause of all the World's ills, and should be ruthlessly stamped out...

I've done two of the four L4D campaigns on advanced. My stats are higher on advanced, which is probably because I'm forced to play better. One thing though, everyone died except for me on the extraction for Death Toll. The AI companions are generally great except in those last battles where you need to coordinate. We were fine until the last tank and even then would probably have lost only Zoey except for Francis and Louis running around like idiots. The good news is my stats were better in virtually every way. better headshots. Better accuracy. Better kill counts. What went wrong is the fact that one normal I could pretty much go through the campaigns without any restarts. On advanced, I've had fpws a few times and had to restart. Some of it's just stupidity and some of it's just dumb luck. And I could always play better. Great game, though, so I like to think I'll keep improving. One thing I hate is that I'll get docked for waking the witch when she was in a spot we were forced to traverse and I had no choice but to get to as good of a position as possible and acitvate her on purpose. Nothing like being forced to pick a fight and then getting a demerit on top of it.

All right, what is it with all the underdog stories this year? Half the teams were down and out early in the season and now we've got the Cards who've been supposed to be beat every time whipping on the Eagles. ...And I tell you, whatever we've been saying, Vol's right about Warner. The guy has come through when it counts. (We also say coming through in the clutch, but that's just slang for keeping his head about him in vital games. haha)

This assumes time, or a lack of duties, making such discussions possible in the first place. If someone brought up "god" where I work he'd get some really strange looks. so your workplace doesn't have discussions of religion? Good. I doubt either atheists or religious folks feel slighted. I've rarely worked anywhere that sexual harrassment has been an issue. However, one of my supervisors did make fun of a co-worker because her breasts were small once. I don't know if she needed the job or not, but she certainly needed income at the very least. So, if he hadn't made the comment, it would not have been an issue. Since he did make the comment, it was. Azure, I simply don't have time. On the way out to San Diego to see the Star Trek exhibit there. I'll either post or pm the link to you when I get back later.

That makes no sense to me. You say you believe homosexuals have the right to marry... then you vote for Prop 8, which amends the California constitution preventing homosexuals from marrying. You say that denying homosexuals the right to marry is the "moral equivalent of holding another human being in bondage", and yet you voted for that very thing, denying homosexuals the right to marry. I'm pretty danged confused by your position at this point. Could you clarify? I don't want to turn this thread into a prop 8 discussion, and so I will limit my answer to say that you misread my previous post. To say that denying homosexuals the right to marry is the equivalent of slavery or disenfranchisement is laughable. Other than that, I've spent a lot of time stating my position regarding prop 8. I merely point out that at least one person who voted for prop 8 did not do so based on religion. I guess I might be alone.

For my part, I think someone should be allowed to advertise, within reason, an atheistic viewpoint. That is to say, atheists should have the same leeway as religious folks. I also think it's prefectly legitimate to refuse to drive a bus based on the atheist message in much the same way an atheist should not be forced to work in a hostile environment by driving around in a bus something akin to "Believe in God. You have no moral compass if you don't." However, I will take issue with a few things. Some posters here, SteveThaiBin springs to mind, say that I should think. I assume deep thoughts. *shrug* Okay. Maybe I'm not quite as well read as Steve or J.E. or ~Di or... well, you get the picture. On the other hand, maybe I am. Are we going to compare reading lists or something? Start a book group? The other issue is the idea that all folks who voted for Prop 8 did so based on relgious beliefs. I vote for Prop 8, for reasons I explained clearly in a different thread, and religion had no part in my reasoning in the least. There were some religious groups and people who spoke against Prop 8. Since I discard, out of hand, that denying homosexuals the right to marry is the moral equivalent of holding another human being in bondage, denying people of color the right to vote, or forcing native americans to live on government designated reservations, I find the over the top sort of hand wringing over the issue distasteful. Do you think Homosexuals should have the right to marry one another? I do. Did you vote for Prop 8? I did. Hey, maybe the California Supreme Court will overstep its bounds again and overturn a constitutional ammendment. In either case, religion was clearly not the motivating factor for me. I'm Catholic. Of course, having voting against... 24 I think it was, I've already added my voice to those who believe homosexuals should have the right to marry. I just don't think the Supreme Court of California should have overtuned the results on prop 24. Some atheists are hostile to religion. Some religious folks are hostile to atheists. However, the double standard argument really fails on a variety of levels, but most of all because the biggest advantage atheists have over religious people is a message of tolerance. Should atheists be allowed to attack religion? Sure, but I don't think it's the most effective way to get your message across. Finally, I have worked under atheist supervisors in the past who openly ridiculed my religion, either for being a Roman Catholic or having religion at all. I have two specific bosses I could cite right now who on more than one occasion openly and vigorously attacked my religion. Now, I didn't file a grievance or take it up higher. I sucked it up and engaged in good natured debate as much as possible. Since I didn't need either job, I didn't back down from the discussion, but I wonder about folks who have a job they need and an employer who actively attacks their religious beliefs. I'll tell you right now, it is absolutely stupid for any of you to think that fanatical atheists won't act like every other religious group when in possession of power. They will use it to persecute people with alternate views. So pardon me if this statement pertains to people like me: "[n]on-religious or anti-religious people have to deal with faux-persecution complexes thrown in their faces by religious folks all the time (please see the previously listed statements which are used un-ironically all over the U.S.)." I think having my supervisor tell me more than once, "only ignorant people are religious," or having another supervisor reprimand me for saying, of all things, "God bless you" after she sneezed is probably a bit beyond the pale. I don't go around bringing this up as a way of saying I was persecuted, although I've heard atheist complain about far less, but rather as an answer to the idea that religious folks aren't 'really' faced with the sorts of things atheist claim as persecution in their own lives. All in all, I don't have a lot of animosity for atheists or opposing religious views. I know a lot of folks on this board are atheists, at least from what I've read, and I don't hold it against them. I appreciate folks who differentiate between religious bigots and people who are religious just as I try to see the difference between hostile atheists and folks who simply have no faith or need in religion. As far as messages go, the idea that folks should consider, "What if there is no God?" is probably a good one. Every religious person should ask and answer that question at the very least on the intellectual level if nothing else.

I finished all four L4D campaigns on normal. Now on to advanced. My hope is that there are more of these short campaigns. I guess I might enjoy a longer campaign with more of a story, I really enjoy the short frantic scramble for safety. I guess each campaign has four maps? I've played as all four toons and tried all the weapons. My friendly fire has gone down but my accuracy still sucks. I've been as low as 25 and as high as 37. I'm not exactly great at headshots, either. I think my high is 11 and my low is 8. At least I'm usually up high in headshots when compared to the sucky AI characters. The AI is pretty lackluster except for two things. As Calax says, they have friendly fire incidents. Also, they have uncanny luck against specials. Now, those two things really do make the AI toons awesome in a lot of ways. On the other hand, the AI have some real disadvantages. First of all, if I'm on voice with other players, I can yell something like, "Hey, please don't loiter on the pipe bomb!" In fact, the human players might step away from explosions and fires and not blame when they had precious seconds to move back from my grenade instead of simply standing there. The other thing is, humans can coordinate better. If there are four or five possible avenues of approach, maybe we don't ALL have to look down the same hallway. L4D is a great idea. Short campaigns comprised of four brief maps. Enough enemy and location variety to keeps things interesting. Just enough weapon variety to serve for four short campaigns. A real team based shooter with AI companions who actually help the player. Great job, Valve.

I dunno. Smart money is on the Eagles, but I'd like to see the Cardinals win. I just think it would be damned funny to see Arizona go home with an NFC championship. I'm still for the Ravens or the steelers to win the Super Bowl. The idea that I'll get to see the game tomorrow is laughable at this point, but I'll catch all the scores as best I can through the day. I like it when folks put forward scores. I think it's fun and it's even better if they're right. So far, Enoch and Laozi say it's Philly. I hope you guys are wrong.

Played the Death toll one as Zoey. We all died on that one, just 'cause the first tank we fought threw a car that smashed two of use down right away and the others couldn't take him out. Dumb luck. The next time, there was a witch. Now, I saw some writing on the wall somewhere that you could sneak up on a witch and smite them. So, I did that on the previous map. I snuck up and we killed her in good order. On the map with the tank, the last one in that campaign, I wanted a little payback for the full party wipe. With that in mind, I snuck up on the witch and this time she took me down. Great, fpw followed by a takedown. Didn't die again, though, and we made it out without much incident, although there were many waves in the last bit before the boat arrived. Also, Death Toll was the first map where someone died. It was weird, too. Francis was at full health one minute and dead the next. Hell, this is great fun. Also played WotLK. This person I've helped in the past wanted to team, which we did. Unfortunately, she took great umbrage when I said that we were going to put some zombies back in the fiery bowels of hell where they belonged. She said she had some pg children in the house, so I tried to be careful, but I always thought that "hell" and "damn" were perfectly acceptable in PG films. Oh well, finished the missions at least.

Wasn't there a group called three tard night?

Actually, I don't see why I should trust popularity less than any single person's opinion at any rate. Of course, I know that Hell Kitty and I share many of the same views on this, so just take my comments in this regard as support for his position on reviews in general. I think the Yatzee reviews are funny. They're almost always negative in some way, and that negative delivery is funny, at least to me. ...But I don't trust people with extremely narrow tastes who spend more time tearing down what they don't like than trying to find something good out there to play. I would never let a Yatzee review keep me from trying a game. ...And that's why a mediocre review from someone who is usually upbeat about a good product is much more likely to keep me from purchasing a product than a negative review from someone who is always negative in the first place.

I expect that my scores will plummet when compared with you guys. No biggie. I don't have the reflexes of a siberian tiger, but I'm just there to have fun and make it to the 'copter. I made it out alive and managed to get the no-one left behind thing. Of course, that was on normal, so I'm sure harder settings will be brutal. Still, on the first run I only needed to be revived 3 times altogether. ...And I never got taken out completely, although I did finish one level with 1 health. It sucked, because I was on point all the time. I ended up taking the brunt of most hunters and tanks. Oddly, the smokers only went after me about as much as everyone else. The only time I didn't jump in and shoulder a tank was after the first tank took me down and I couldn't aford a second take down on that level. I let the others get him on them and then I emptied a couple clips into him. I chose to take a random toon, and ended up with Luis, which I thought was cool. I actually like all the characters, so I'm happy to play any of them. I guess, from the name on the screen when I received acheivements, my name is Cratereus, but I don't know how to join one of your games. How do we meet and smite?

Left4dead is an excellent game. It's so simple, but the game invests me in my companions in ways that I have never been invested in a shooter before. ...And that's the AI companions. They don't even complain much when I shoot them in the back, which happens fairly frequently. I have gone through the first four scenarios of No Mercy, and I'm loving it. I'm 40 now, which I guess means that my reflexes aren't quite up to speed. Against the AI, I have always had more infected kills than any two companions combined. On the other hand, I have far more incidents of shooting my friends. I also tend to get targetted. The first witch we encountered, I activated her, but not by light. I dutifully turned off the flashlight and then then tried to sneak by her. Apparently, with or without light, you can't walk within 5 feet of them without drawing attention. Makes sense, I just thought they were entirely light acitvated. After that, I just made sure I kept way the hell away. I can tell the differences between boomers, smokers, hunters, and, of course, witches based on sound now. I would say tank, but who needs to identify them by sound when you can tell it's a tank because he's beating on your arse with your arm? Something I thought I wouldn't like is the fact that they've given you four survivors from which to choose. That's great, man! I mean, at first it was like, 'you can't choose your own look?" ...But the cutscene at the beginning and the voice over work made a believer out of me. If anyone wants to play with an ol' shooter like me, I'll hook up with them and we'll unleash a can of whoop-*** the likes these deaders have never seen. Yeah, I'll accidently unleash some of it on you, but you can just pistol whip me from time to time for revenge.

I think there's a lot of cutting that could be done to PS:T without hurting the experience. In fact, removing some of the dialogue, adding a bit of dialogue in certain spots, proofreading the dialogue so that the few but glaring mistakes would be gone would all make the game better. ...And it's probably my all time favorite game. The music and the atmosphere were great, and I don't really care about combat, although I suppose combat could be make more engaging. If you can get good voice over actors for the whole game, voicing some things would be great. Don't fixating on having everything voiced, though, as you'd end up messing up the written dialogue which is inextricably associated with the title at any rate. I would keep the art essentially the same, although improving the graphics and certainly allowing for significantly higher resolutions is a simple no brainer. Like Sammael, I would spend time fleshing out some of the area, quests, and characters. Ravel is just fine, but FFG needs either more development or less clues. The infamous journal either needs to have more to it or be gone, of course. The PC need not be able to open it, but it would be better to advance that story more or heighten the impact of her refusal to open it. As it stands now, it's just something that frustrates a lot of players. There are many things I would do with PS:T, but I would not dramatically change what I view as the essence of the game. However, more than a remake of the game, which I would most surely purchase, I would like a spiritual successor. I'd like a game that takes what PS:T did and, not with the same story or character, does it again. I think MotB had a lot in common with PS:T. I think it is as much of a spiritual successor as any game I've ever seen. That was an expansion. I'd like to see someone build a full title from the ground up.

You guys are driving me crazy on Maria's part, even though I know that taking someone's part on the internet is a good way to advertise your backside for arse-kicking practice. Some games require more of the player's dexterity and physical skills. Let's use the Doom example, although any so called twitch game would do. In Doom, you live or die by your shooting reflexes and your reaction time to enemies. However, you still benefit from using your head. You can use the environment to your advantage. You can minimize your exposure to enemy fire. You can approach objectives in clever and innovative ways. So, Doom is our FPS. Twitch game, but you can still benefit from using your head. Now, let's look at Chess. You use your head to win. However, you must be able to raise your head long enough from a puddle of drool to look at the board and move a piece. You might be physically disabled, and you can still win at Chess, but it requires, at the very least, some way to move your pieces or at least convey your moves. Until we develop mental telepathy, there must be some physical action in order to convey the moves, whether it's blinking an eye or wiring complex signals from your gonads. Now, I'm sure that some games might be more or less all reflexive in the way that chess is all cerebral, but breathing really isn't a game, so that's out. Okay, so we have chess, a mental game that's damned hard, either against the computer or a good human player. We have doom that can be damned hard for some folks. The difficulty in each is for different reasons. Since it's not very difficult for most of us to pick up a chess piece and move it, the difficulty comes from trying to form a good strategy or least learn our opening moves. For doom, since it doesn't take much thought for most of us to think "point gun, shoot bad guy!" the difficulty comes from our reflexes and trying to shoot quickly and accurately. Now, without really getting into who's right in the larger action rpg and shooting thing, I will say that there is some overlap. For example, I don't care whether we can it a fps or action adventure or classic RPG, I could very easily strafe and shoot and kill ranged opponents in oblivion. As much as combat relied on stats, the player could use his reflexes to help win. This is true in a lot of RPGs, even classic one. Sure, much less in turn based games where the most strenuous physical skill the player has is pushing the on button on the computer, but many classic rpgs allowed the player to take advantage of good reflexes to help overcome encounters. So, the real problem is establishing categories, which is cool. But the point remains that Maria is right. I hope you forgive me for making an argument for you, btw. Please no arse-kicking practice on my backside. Some games require more reflex, some require more mind, but most games benefit from player physical reactions.

Okay, I know some folks don't think he's funny, but I was hooting over that one. "She's EVIL!"

That's okay. A pleasure to read. Maybe I'm being too irritated, and so we clash heads. Anyhow, it's not like I didn't know how you feel about religion. After all, I figured "There cannot be free will unless we kill god" was probably meant to convey something. Oh well, we both ranted a bit. No harm, no foul.

Yeah, I have to admit that I had the exact same experience. I thought the first couple of books were entertaining enough, but I stopped reading by book four. EDIT: I've been following the thread and I have to say, I'm getting the game. Unless there is some compelling evidence they completely flubbed it entirely, I'm simply going to buy it.

I think it's trivial to accuse his book of being "Mormon propaganda." *shrug* His stories are well written, if a bit sentimental, and do well commercially. If you think that's entirely because of the Mormon population, fine by me. Personally, I think it's a silly and easy attack to accuse a book as being propaganda just because it shows one group or another in a better light. It's a shallow sort of criticism. Doesn't hurt me personally.

I don't see why any of that is an issue, Calax. He's a Mormon. The idea that he should somehow remove the influences of his past from his writing simply isn't reasonable. If you wrote a novel, I'm sure you would include something of your own values in the story. I'm sure you couldn't help it. If your characters have a disdain for religion in a story in which the religious people destroy each other while a small community of atheists managed to survive and thrive amidst the chaos and mayhem, no one need second guess you. Some religious people might not read your novel, which is there right. It is your right to pass on Card's books. As a Roman Catholic, I will say that Card is not hostile to other religions in general. I think he is less accepting of atheism. Sure. However, I haven't seen him outright attack atheism in the same way, say, the Golden Compass attacks organized religion. You don't see me railing against the Golden Compass. Why should I? Start a story. Read a story. If you like it, read some more. If you don't, stop. You can go on a multi-paragraph rant, if you want, and I generally read your posts beginning to end, dude, but I think you're taking more offense at his books than they deserve. I think he has a fine talent, and he has all sorts of books and I've read quite a few of them, but his fixation on religion tends to be fairly sociological. Yes, he's preachy. It's not like that's new of literature in any age. He has some real insight into human nature. Atheists and religious folks can both have real insight into humanity. Folks from one side or the other who believe otherwise are simply fooling themselves. His biggest crime, in my opinion is that he has plundered his own setting to the point that I simply don't buy his books any more. I do read books I get as gifts, generally speaking, because I'm pretty much willing to try new things, especially music, literature, and cinema. However, I don't recommend Ender in Exile to anyone. It's written after the fact and tries to plug the holes in areas where we, as fans, have already suspended our disbelief. I'll probably start on that One Million A.D. book after I'm done with Ender in Exile. That doesn't look like my cup of tea either, but you never know.

I'm playing the ever so fun, "Waiting for Steam to download the files" game. Left 4 dead 4 teh win I've decided I'll just get both ME and L4D.

I'm reading Ender in Exile. Orson Scott Card has real talent. He's created a variety of wonderful settings. However, I can't help but feel that he's completely plundered the Ender universe. ...and some of the ideas he's had have been good, don't get me wrong. It's just that the property is way past its prime. I'm have a hard time moving through the book right now. I also think that he's bought too much into the notion of interweaving multiple story lines. I think it dilutes the reader's investment in any particular character. I'm not talking between books, either. Specifically, Ender in Exile strikes me almost like many vignettes thrown together with a backdrop rather than one coherent storyline. Still interesting. He's a bit sentimental, I guess that's emo to you youngsters, but that doesn't bother me. As long as I don't feel like hurling because of syrupy sweet dialogue, it's not so bad.

Those pictures play hell with the way the page looks for a couple of seconds, but they sure look beautiful. What is that, anyhow? Is that the one with the Asian chic who runs on the roofs? That first one is particularly breathtaking to me.

I'm not so sure of that, buck-o. Anyhow, any ideas? Mass Effect or Left4dead? You clowns can be funny, but you're not so bad at suggesting decent games.

I feel for you, bro. Rat bastards. Dedicated raiding guilds are filled with real tools, I'm telling you now. The irony is that I was in a good guild with my warrior that I had to quit because I'd rather play with my family, which makes raiding nigh impossible.