Gormongous

Welp, I just beat NG+ and think I'm done with Dark Souls for good. It was an interesting playthrough, but I really missed there being no surprises with the gear (especially the boss weapons that all performed pathetically next to my Lightning Zweihander +5 and Claymore +15 even when fully upgraded) and watching my character grow into the build I'd planned for him. It was nice to go through the game with near-absolute knowledge and watch my build kick unlimited ass, but I couldn't imagine doing it twice or more, not with my loadout already having stayed the same once through the game. I just need the RPG element there, even though it's not really the main attraction in Dark Souls. I'm looking forward to a month or two catching up on TV and reading, maybe playing some Civilization V, before coming back to Dark Souls II. Actually, speaking of my Lightning Zweihander +5 and my Claymore +15, I'm still not completely convinced that I'm aware of all the factors going into damage output. My Zweihander does 650 damage on paper, 325 normal damage and 325 lightning damage. My Claymore does 529 damage, 257 normal damage and 272 from scaling. That said, the Claymore still out-performed the Zweihander, from what I can tell of the floating DPS numbers in combat, in every single situation on which I took notes in both NG and NG+. Even a supposedly lightning-weak enemy like first-stage Smough took around 200 damage from the Zweihander's R1 and 250 from the Claymore's R1. I can't explain it, except for hints here and there on the internet that certain parts of a weapon's moveset add additional ATK to a weapon? I've played enough Dark Souls that I'm more okay with a weapon just "feeling better", but I'm still very curious in the end.

I'm only four episodes in, but so far Kokoro Connect is actually really good? It's maybe the first body-switch comedy that's used the conceit to ask interesting questions. Awkward teens switch bodies and discover each others' secrets thereby, exploring how we deceive the people about whom we care with good intentions and what happens when that deception falls apart. I actually like it so much that I'm almost certain it can't keep it up, so I'll be posting again here about it soon! Actually, my biggest problem with it right now is that Toyosaki Aki is using her Yui voice from K-On! on a character who otherwise has nothing in common with Yui and that's really distracting. New character, new voice!

Wait, what? That's exactly the post that's there. What point are you trying to make? Honestly, I'm done with this thread... uh, again? I can't believe I'm getting guff for finding something wrong with the art that everybody was mocking a few pages back but that now makes me a hypocrite because I ought to play the whole goddamn game to have enough context to talk about the box it comes in. Call me back when ObjectiveGameReviews.com buys the forums and the ban on opinions becomes official, alright? I probably won't even play the damn game because I found the UI and art density in the last one to be suffocating, so I really am a hypocrite there. Blah.

I really don't have time right now to go into microaggressions or Social Justice 101, Architecture. Suffice to say, everyone's a little racist, because that's how society works, but most of us are working on it, which is the best we can do, so there's no need to shame anyone unless they're defending their racist thoughts and actions.

Nah Twig, it just makes you think a racist thing. There's a big difference there. It's okay to think racist things, so long as you're trying your best not to do it. I think them all the time and I consider myself pretty good at not thinking them. It's just the way the world works, unfortunately. Excuse me?

Yeah, it is. You have a picture right in front of you. A picture is all the information you need to have an opinion about said picture. Do you really have nothing to say about what the picture itself shows, with an East Asian in a Western suit sitting on a Buddha draped in bullets and with his foot on its severed head while he uses a more traditionally dressed East Asian as an armrest? Does that really evoke no response at all from you? If it doesn't, we probably ought to agree to disagree.

I'll try to make it easier, by asking the same loaded question of you. Why do you think it's okay to subjugate fake people? If the answer's that it's just a game, we might be done here.

How many people go out and murder someone because their character killed someone in a game? How many people go out and use a racial slur because their character used one in a game? Based solely on those numbers, rather than some abstract rubric of relative severity, which is a more pressing issue in games about which we should raise awareness? To imply that I shouldn't object to racist and imperialist imagery in a game because it also contains murder is a mix between a tu quoque fallacy and a fallacy of relative privation. Yes, both are bad, one more than the other, but the other has more direct societal consequences and thus deserves our attention as much if not more.

Because murder isn't a chronic and systemic societal problem that has been normalized and is being perpetuated knowingly and unknowingly in my city, in my country and all over the world right now. Because no one besides someone who is mentally ill looks at a fake character getting shot and finds their beliefs being confirmed, but many people look at a fake character getting subjugated, oppressed, brutalized, or discriminated against and find their beliefs being confirmed. Murder and bigotry are apples and oranges when it comes to video games. Is it really that hard to understand? And ugh, talk about a loaded question. No, I don't think murder in games is "okay". I don't know why you'd phrase it that way.

I don't think it's been violently negative, to be honest. I do think it might seem that way, because it's been a whole lot of people giving a moderately negative reaction to a piece of key art for a game that could give someone a winning bingo card for the "problematic things to show in an East Asian context" raffle. I also don't really like the Far Cry games beyond the second, so I don't find myself to be terribly hypocritical, but even if I am, being a hypocrite does not invalidate someone's argument. It's called a "tu quoque" fallacy. Speaking of, I strongly suspect that there's a lot of messed up stuff in Grand Theft Auto V as well, but I've always thought that about GTA games and so I don't play them. Anyway, none of it is displayed on the box, which is actually quite subdued for all that people say is going on inside, so I can't speak to it at all.

Honestly, watching a friend play Batman: Arkham City, I'm really disappointed in every aspect of the Freeze character there. His delivery is flat, his design is overdone but not in a visually interesting way, and his pathos is really surface-level. It improved every single one of his lines just to read them in a deep-voiced Austrian accent, so yeah, I'm going to stick up for the Schwarzenegger Freeze, if not the Clooney Batman.

People have given kilometers over and over in this thread. I have personally said that I am excited to see a game with a non-white protagonist and antagonist, even though I still find the imagery of the game itself problematic. You, on the other hand, have never shown any interest in acknowledging the validity of any position that doesn't resemble your own. Apparently, people aren't allowed to make assumptions about what Far Cry 4 will be based on its marketing... unless they're like you and make only positive assumptions about it. That's great, but I'm really not invested in the typical "oh wow, this game will be awesome" dialogue that always surrounds a game pre-release, not when there's something more interesting going on. I really have no idea why you're so defensive about people reacting negatively to the marketing for a video game that you know nothing about. What would you gain by shutting people like Bjorn up, besides a emptier and more boring forum?

I love Danielle's fixation on animals. Near the end, when all the Thumbs are making poop jokes, she shouts out, "Poop like a piggy!" Poop is only an excuse to talk about pigs more. Obviously Super Noah's Ark 3D was the perfect game for them to end on.

Terri, I understand your points, but I don't know if I like where your argument is going. Ubisoft has a right to try to tackle difficult issues with games, but we as their audience and market have a right to tell them when they fail and to scrutinize future attempts more closely because of those failures. What you talk about when you talk about Ubisoft's history are all games with big ambitions but at best shallow outcomes. In that case, since there have been few examples of Ubisoft doing something good with themes of historical and social issues but many examples of Ubisoft doing something facile or misguided with them, some skepticism is definitely warranted and Ubisoft should be aware of and prepared for that. They should be prepared to sell us on their game's premise and respond sympathetically to valid concerns. That's what they should do, not this clumsy radio silence, only broken by the occasional "nuh-uh" about certain important elements of their game. I mean, the perfect example for me is this: If they wanted us to judge it by more than its box art, they should do more than release just the box art. Every detail about this game beyond the box art has improved my opinion of the game that said box art poorly represents, so I think it's really perverse that the box art was released, people reacted accordingly to the problematic imagery on it, and only then did the creative director start making vague statements about what the game actually is. It's almost enough for me to buy into Argobot's conspiracy theory of intentional controversy-baiting.

I know it's not exactly the same, but shortly before Christmas my ex told me that she was seeing someone else and that it was serious. The next couple months were really hard for me, even though I had been the one to break it off. I was in pain all the time and didn't really know what to do about it. I think I just got used to it. So what I'm saying is, good luck and I feel for you.

I was more just jokingly referencing the IGN article posted earlier in which a racially ambiguous but handsomely smirking pink-suited villain is presented as somehow representative of the "tough issues" that video games should be tackling these days. Video games can be as serious or silly as they want to be, of course, but I hate so much that the culture surrounding them is still so insecure and immature that the response to "This offends me" is as often "Well, here's why you're wrong, so shut up" as "Wow, we're so sorry, that sucks."

To explain my part in this, my problem is if we're stating any opinion as fact, even the opinion of the developer about what they've made. A developer can accidentally make something really not okay, as often they do, so acting as though theirs is the last word is a really high-handed and unpleasant way of shutting down a conversation that always ought to be happening everywhere. These are the "tough issues" with which games should be dealing, not how evil a pink-suited villain needs to be. Honestly, the culprit for me here is Ubisoft. The information about this game has been one leak after another, followed by a lot of half-assed clarification-as-damage-control. Why can't they get out ahead of it instead of using Twitter and the like to just hint at good intentions?

My college had extremely modern low-flow toilets. They never clogged. The reason old toilets clog is, like Merus kinda said, too much water through too small pipes. With a nice low-flow toilet, sometimes you need to flush twice to get everything down, but it barely ever clogs because the water pressure's simply not high enough. I don't feel bad about introducing this topic at all. This was my night last night. The best I can do is make conversation out of it.

People keep pushing Cross Game on me, saying that if anyone is able to like any sports anime, that one's it.

Oh, ugh! Yeah, I like to think I'm free of magic thinking in my daily life, but there's nothing like washing your hands thoroughly with antibacterial soap and discovering that you can still smell the shit afterward. Wait, what? Soap doesn't magically annihilate all dirt and disease on contact? I need to wash multiple times, maybe even soak my hands, before they stop smelling like poop? It's harrowing just to think about.

I don't think Sean's advice was "ditch your friends if they say something sexist," though. I think it was more just knowing that you're not obligated to keep being friends with people who make you chronically uncomfortable, with you acting in good faith and all other things being equal. I agree with that advice in the case of sexism and everywhere else, too.

Taco Bell don't like you, though.

I see, so you haven't actually bothered to read my posts, since you're contesting points I've already conceded and ignoring a lot of what I say is actually problematic about the unintended consequences of Far Cry 4's imagery, and would prefer to keep arguing with a strawman you've invented for your own purposes. Fantastic, that means I'm done here. Thanks, everybody!

Yes.

Yeah, I'm regretting having typed it. It's changed now.