Drowsy Emperor

http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/11m21k/starcraft_2_will_be_dead_before_legacy_of_the/ Interesting rant about SCII. I don't know enough to offer an opinion but I can understand what he's saying. The game is so cutthroat that it actually drives away people who want to play it. And I'm not even going to go into the whole "selling expansions as full games" thing. I was going to buy HotS to play a little MP but when I saw that I needed WoL I told them to piss off. What am I supposed to do, dump a 100 euros altogether for the privilege of playing SCII MP? They're mad, mad, mad.

I'm for conscription and against professional armies as it leads to them becoming a mercenary pretorian guard of whoever is the ruling class while the general population grows passive.

I stopped watching. Grown tired of the endless meandering plots and relentless (and pointless) carnage.

If I had a flame thrower I'd be reaching for it now.

You seem to be arguing about something completely different. I am talking about the grossly exaggerated garbage that the OP keeps putting up. I never said I had a problem with female characters. I even used the new Tomb Raider as a good example, and she isn't exactly wearing a burqa. Speaking of TR, Drowsy I agree with you that the story and seriousness of the new one is not a direction I am interested in. But that really has nothing to do with her diminishing cup size. This looks ridiculous. It's definitely not the body of an acrobat. Leisure Suit Larry is clearly marketed towards a specific group. It isn't a dungeon crawl, it is literally a game about boobs. I have no problem with that, it isn't a game I have an interest in, but it is marketed towards a specific audience and that is fine. The cup size, as silly as it is - was part of the image that made LC an iconic character that everyone recognizes. Besides there's nothing unrealistic about giving the character model big breasts. You'd just have to make it more proportional in a modern game, since the model corresponds more to real life and is no longer very rough 3D. But throwing out that part of the image in favor of a character with small breasts shows a curious and worrying tendency to pre emptively bend over for "public opinion", as if a game needs that sort of justification. You could also say super mario is an offesive stereotype of an Italian, but that's really not what the character is about right?

I'd play it because it looks like a fun game. And maybe if you show them a pic of the dwarf in that game they will change their mind. Besides, if the game is anything like Odin's Sphere the character is likely to be 10cm tall on the screen. In other words its barely visible. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njyU-0YFgzY So yes, all the girls are half naked but its obviously done for comic effect - and its all so tiny anyway. Definitely not in anyone's face. Its all so silly you'd really have to be intentionally negative (like the journalist) to make it out as something horrible

I so want to play this but there's no point to buying a PS3 to play the couple of titles I'm interested in.

As for female gamers: I've tried to bring my girlfriend into the hobby with more or less success. Like so many female gamers she isn't really much into reflex heavy games or strategy games, preferring adventures, RPG's and other more cinematic experiences that can be played at a slower pace. Now I'd like her to enjoy the same games I do but I wouldn't bend over backwards to make every genre accessible to her. What would be the point? They'd probably lose the elements I enjoy in the process and she already has games that service her needs. Its only natural that our interests aren't the same and its quite enough that they overlap enough that we can play certain games together.

Ah now you have asked an important question " why be concerned with broadening the base? " This is simply about the return on investment that shareholders expect when it comes to large corporations. Large companies can't just make profit, there profit needs to increase each year or why would people like fund managers invest in that particular industry. It does make sense and this won't change. So rather focus on games developed by smaller companies that don't have the pressure of increased profitability every year. These smaller companies don't have to be so concerned with growing the customer base Of course. It was more of a rhetorical question. I think there is still space for smaller companies to deliver any niche product and make a profit - if there wasn't there would be no kickstarter and several PC genres would have already died out. I'm not really hoping for anything from the big companies that make AAA titles. On rare occasions its possible to play something cool from them (like Mirror's Edge), but, in general, I'm done with their products.

GO FOR THE EYES BOO

Maybe, but on the other hand I'm not going to play the new TR game precisely because its obviously targeting an audience that I'm not a part of. And that has nothing to do with Lara's boobs and everything to do with a forced attempt to appeal to everyone. The same thing killed Mass Effect for me and many other games. They may be games for "everyone", but they're not games for me. I find the new TR's gratuitous violence and the whole "from (practically) rape victim to avenger" more juvenile on the whole than the silly and carefree nonsense of the old Tomb Raiders. So what if she had large boobs? It was an innocent game about playing a female Indiana Jones, not a growing up story of a traumatised girl. Why should games be so concerned with broadening their player base? What's wrong with making a game for me and people like me? You make it sound like a crime that some of us want to enjoy games, akin to those we enjoyed in our youth but with the benefit of new technology - not someone's attempt at making the perfect McBurger that they'll fill with whatever they think is socially relevant enough for the mass audience to lap it up.

That's one very modern looking bow. I really want Thief 4 to be a good game, but I have no faith in reboots. It'll probably be like Deus Ex HR, you play it once then you forget about it. Eidos has been living on old glory for far too long.

Is this also Vannilaware's work? Its not as if their art style changed over the years anyway. Where were these idiot journalists when Grim Grimoire and Odin's Sphere were made years ago? Another fun fact. The leading characters in both their games are non-exaggerated female characters. I finished both of those games. Of course I couldn't enjoy them because I couldn't play a male. I WANT A REFUND

Is it? Or is it just enforced political correctness? In a typical scenario, without drugs, strength and muscle gains are much slower in women - and the realistic strength maximum is lower. That's one typical stat that should never be equal. but is because the alternative would make for a PR disaster. There's a reason females don't compete in full contact martial sports with men and while some are culture related the fact is that they simply can't be competitive in the same weight categories. Of course, I'm all for willfully ignoring this facet of reality in a computer game- but the very notion that the games industry is sexist and mysogynistc is a myth.

The only result of the whole anti-objectification campaign can be observed on the new Tomb raider. They made her boobs smaller but her ass is still porn-star perfect. The moisture effects on her thighs would make Jenna Jameson green with envy. Talk about winning a battle only to lose the war. They also made her strong because strength of character now means killing people who want to do bad things to you in a gruesome fashion. To quote the good Volo: R00fles

That's a refference to the 404 error?

The point he is making is that they got to "share" through no effort of their own. So if some guy who was not part of that original founding group wants to play, does he have to build everything from the ground up? They did go through some effort, they used the legal system to get their practice and playing time One could also easily argue that they used the legal system to get something for nothing. Not that I have a stake in this discussion.

Done with XCOM. 7/10 -For bugs -For lack of replayability -For weak story -For lack of tactical diversity +For visual design in some aspects +For decent sound design +For fun factor for most of the game

Other issues regarding design come about, because of how enemies appear and the cover system, every shootout is similar. 99% of the time, they take cover in a location thats hard to flank or too far to even be flanked without risk. Tactics are all about minimising risk, that's the whole point of the game. Charging forward from cover to cover to flank the aliens is generally stupid because they shoot very well and every approach increases their chances. The imperative is to drop enemies quickly so they don't get opportunities to shoot. Manouvering around is often too inefficient because its a waste of time and its risky. It pays much more to use high aim soldiers like snipers and to scout with expendable troops and then rape the enemies from afar. Sine its impossible to surprise enemies lower range troops can never be as good since they're on a level playing field with the aliens. Heavies are the worst culprit because their aim is crap and their special abilities are either useless or situational.

I'm on the last mission in Xcom and the game has revealed several flaws that can be quite annoying. Firstly, the game is still quite buggy. The worst bug of all is the loading screen. Its an oversized console type affair that would be passable if it were not for the fact that the sorting system doesnt work. The saves are automatically named and are thrown together in a jumbled mess instead of being sorted properly by date. This is worsened by the fact that the screen displays only 4 saves at a time and that mouse wheel scrolling is broken. It goes properly in one direction and skips four saves in the other. I dont know if its intentional but its hugely irritating having to spend a few minutes gingerly scrolling so a not to skip the save the game tucked away god knows where. Secondly, interface issues. The interface itself is a cumbersome console turd that could be overlooked if it didn't glitch so much. I experienced issues from the whole interface disappearing, to displaying different hit probabilities on the alien head notification and on the actual attack command. Grenades and rockets are a pain to use because the cursor skips so much due to getting stuck on terrain features. Furthermore, whether or not a unit sees an enemy from a certain position is pure guesswork. Sometimes its impossible to tell until you move it. This is a burden in certain situations where its crucial to move a unit in a certain place to fire an important shot. Another dubious design decision is ghost armor. Its fun to use but it allows you to rape enemies from halfway across the map with a sniper without any frear of retaliation. Last are the story issues. The final mission is an uninspired cliche, and altogether too easy with the advanced gear. I haven't finished it yet but its been a pushover so far. The game has a lengthy single player campaign but no effort wa made to supply it with a fleshed out story or characters. Its way too long to be played in a sitting like civ or another turn based affair, way to linear to let you make your own story, and too shallow to be replayed for its story alone. Its a sort of worst of both worlds affair, the blandness of a strategy campaign without the open ended nature of other turn based strategy.

I wonder about the price ticket of these Hollywood celebrities. I think Kiefer Sutherland works for peanuts now.

Rule no 1: People who are offended by boobs in as trivial a medium as a videogame have issues. Doesn't matter which - deep seated, or superficial ones they're still as broken as the Mass Effect companions. If anyone is so abysmally insecure that they need Female Shepard to reflect their personal gender politics, then I suggest voluntary comittal to an institution or signing up for the French foreign legion. Its as if I expected Shepard to be a Serb nationalist, then start bitching on forums with ten like minded individuals and all of a sudden I'm an important demographic with an opinon worth considering.

You're proving my point. It will take a woman to disprove it. You're not one, even if you act like it.

So much for CoH 2. My graphics card couldn't take even the performance test. It overheated in under 20 seconds. Time to buy a new one and save up for a new CPU. Now while this card isn't in the best state ever, it can still run XCOM, Civ V and the original CoH without overheating (though I havent tried the last one in ages). Although trying, say, Painkiller (yes the old one) overheats it in 15 minutes like clockwork. Funny thing is, with the settings on minimum CoH 2 looks substantially worse than the original game - which I could run at a respectable 30fps. Here I could only get 15fps before the crash. Optimisation it seems, is a thing of the past.

In these topics its only the men debating the respectfulness of clevage revealing outfits. Women on the other hand see their **** every day in front of the mirror. They couldn't care less.