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Heh, I've played three of those if you include Portal. I know I'll play SotC one day, maybe P4, but probably not many of the others.

You're being sarcastic, aren't you? I do sort of feel that way about him though. I share a lot of his views and I enjoy (and respect) that he is able to express them so articulately. Unlike Bjorn I relate to him quite a bit. Honestly, in 2008 I don't think a lot of people had the idea to even look for meaning or message in mechanics or design. That's why people focused on the text.

Gom Jabbar!

Nordic Games bought it and I don't think they have the money to make AAA games. They probably just want to re-releases and stuff.

I'm gonna go through and try some of the games here, but for now here's another recommendation: I don't think there's a download link for it so you'll need the Unity browser plugin. You can play it here. It's a point and click game, there's not much to it (read the instructions). I found it endearing though.

I'm trying to play all the games I bought in the last Steam sale and one of those was E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy. It's strange on many levels. The world it takes place in is strange as hell, a lot of the systems in the game are strange but the most strange thing about it is how it manages to be good and awful at the same time. It's hard to compare this game to anything else, it has parts that remind me of Deus Ex, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Crysis but at the same time it's nothing like those games. It's got the freedom and systems complexity of Deus Ex, the player empowerement of Crysis and the loose structure and jankiness of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. That's the good part, at its heart it's a fun game with interesting combat. At times it's got fantastic atmosphere, but then it throws something completely out of place at you. The writing tries to be serious and then it gives you conversation options that make Duke Nukem look mature. It's worth playing though.

I don't think these analogies and hypotheticals are helpful. First of all, I didn't say you shouldn't feed birds. I do in fact feed them. My point was that you can't remove suffering in nature because it runs on suffering. If you help one species you'll hurt another. The overpopulation of humans is another matter and we have various ways of settling disputes. Killing people is one of those methods but I have a hard time seeing anyone doing that in the name of population decrease. Stavation is also an immediate issue and overpopulation is a more long term issue (especially since humans breed slower than birds). And I didn't say animals don't matter, I said because they can't share our morals we can't always apply those morals the same way when it comes to animals. I don't disagree with any of this, but I still make a distinction in how I apply my own morals with regards to the two groups. It doesn't mean I don't think any morals apply to the second group. I think it's okay to kill Possums in New Zealand because they're an ecological disaster. They're not responsible for their breeding, so we are and unfortunately we can't do a lot about it except kill them. That doesn't mean I think it's okay to torture them. It's moral to kill them because it's mitigating net harm done. When dealing with humans that is rarely the case, but it happens.

What I meant was more that our ability to mutually agree to not kill each other was what allowed the formation of larger groups to begin with. It was to everyone's benefit if people didn't murder each other. In that sense it was done out of practicality. Anyway, I don't want to get sidetracked into that. Regarding food aid, I obviously don't think that's wrong but we have other ways of dealing with overpopulation (even if we currently aren't). We can't tell animals to stop breeding. I know this has come up in the thread before, the communication issue. I think it's relevant because morals are a set of rules that we try to mutually agree on and impose upon ourselves. Creatures that have no ability to join that mutual understanding will to some degree be excluded from it. I can't tell a moth to not eat my sweater and that matters (it's the larvae that eat but whatever).

10. Killing isn't inherently immoral, but it needs to be (with regards to humans) in order to have a functioning society. Even if I don't believe that, the point is that there are practical aspects to morality and morals are largely arbitrary. We humans are not completely rational beings and so you cannot use a fully rational approach to deduce the personal rules we're supposed to follow. What I mean by that is that you're never going to get a set of workable morals by trying to have a rational argument whether killing mosquitos is okay or not. I try to let flies and such out. One year there was a massive boom of hoverflies, they inevitably got stuck indoors and I caught hundreds of them, one by one, because I felt like it. I've also had a moth problem (small ones) and killed every moth I saw, even the younglings. It's a practical issue. All life comes at the expense of other life, so you cannot live by a set of morals that says all life is equal. Should I feed birds during the winter? If I don't, more will starve to death. If I do I'll contribute to an overpopulation of certain birds. Not to mention that they get stressed and fly into windows, having them congregate makes it easier for sparrowhawks to come grab them and in the spring/summer a single bluetit can eat 1000+ insects per day! That's a lot of killing. It's a zero sum game, and nature doesn't have morals. Those are our own construction and we can't reconcile them.

Every British person I know says "cunt" a lot when they're drunk

Strafe Left is where it's at

This should probably go somewhere else, but since it's all GiTS in here I'll mention that I recognised this as I was playing some E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy:

I don't think ethnicity is particularly important to the character(s), in a vacuum I wouldn't mind the casting (in the same way I wouldn't mind an Asian take on a western story), but in the context of Hollywood racism it's a lot more problematic. I wonder about the nudity though, I guess they'll just do something like the 5th Element. I think it serves a purpose in the movie, showing how Motoko doesn't care about being nude emphasises how detached she is from her robot body, but at the same time it's a little gratuitous. I mean, how convenient that you have a robot body that matches people's sexual ideas so that you can get away with close ups of her breasts. I was doing some reading here and there about the movie and some people tried to say that it wasn't about titillation, but come on.

I finally got around to watching Ghost in the Shell. I thought it was fantastic. The writing is the weakest part, because it brings up things that the movie looks like it's about and then ditches them so it ends up saying nothing. That's okay (I think it fits the movie actually), but the problem is that it's not written in a way that's suggestive. There's very direct exposition about its themes and you can't have that and then not take it anywhere. I still loved it though, because it has such an incredible mood. I suspect some people don't like the pacing, but that was another thing I loved. The slow cuts, the long collage of the city, the two second bursts of action, it all comes together perfectly. I don't know what the live action version of this will be, but I suspect it'll have an entirely different feel. The movie strangely does remind me of a film Scarlett Johansson was in though, namely Lost in Translation. If you took out the action scenes you'd mostly be left with long shots of a city evoking existential angst, which is what Lost in Translation is (I love that movie too).

Barley is good if you want something to chew on in your food.

I finally got around to taking a stroll through Hernhand. I'm going to have to disagree with Clyde here, I think Bernband is better. Maybe this is unfair and has to do with the order I played them in, but to me Bernband was evocative of a city out of a 60's sci-fi novel, while Hernhand felt evocative of Bernband. There are a few things I think Bernband does very well. First off, it has fantastic economy of space, which is something that always appeals to me. Secondly, it's great at creating contrast. For example, you go from an overcrowded room directly onto the strangely serene outdoor bridge with the cars passing by underneath. It's also just amazing at creating atmosphere. For me it's a lot about the details and I think more attention was paid to those in Bernband. Every room has something interesting going on, either with its lighting, sound or geometry. I like the way the low resolution makes things in the distance vague, I like the grain filter that makes untextured walls feel natural, I like the room geometry that's just there to cast interesting shadows. Now, I like things about Hernhand too, but I don't think it's as strong in its execution. It's the opposite of Bernband in its use of space. Every room is large, every corridor is long. It's not as dense. For every scene that makes you feel like you're in a place, there's a long corridor with a stretched jpeg artifact-ridden texture that doesn't feel evocative of anything. There are a few locations that mirror ones in Bernband and for me those highlighted how well executed they were in Bernband. I don't mind the lack of alpha channel on the sprites and that kind of stuff, but Hernhand just seems to care less about every part of its presentation whereas Bernband feels like it cares a huge amount and in fact derives most of its strength from it. I realise I talked more about Bernband than Hernhand, but I can help it because think the former is a pretty amazing lesson in environment design.

I'm sorry, I hate this argument. It's one thing to be annoyed at people who cast moral judgement on you for consuming meat (that's understandable), but it's another to deflect the issue of the meat industry by saying there are worse problems. If you want to solve those problems then get on it, don't get mad at people who are trying to make a difference. Chances are that if they're willing to change one part of their lifestyle they're willing to change another. We can't make a list of global issues and start from the top down. Anyway, meat. I don't think it's inherently wrong to breed and kill animals for consumption, but the way our society goes about it is abhorrent. Yes Bjorn, many other things are too, but I try my best to avoid some of those as well. edit: I hope I'm not sounding too aggressive. We're all friends here.

It matters as much as any other mistake. Being a writer and saying you don't care about using words correctly is stupid. It's okay to make mistakes, but it's also okay to point them out.

It's a double pun, because Insane is also an old off-road racing game

I played DA:O so wrong. I think I missed every optional party member.

I could swear I heard it was coming to PC eventually, just not at the same time.

If I see SAM on a map I think SA-6

So, Vaati made a video on an upcoming indie game that looks like a translation of the Souls games into 2D: I'd be lying if I said I wasn't interested in playing it, but at the same time the sheer number of similarities makes me feel uneasy. Not in a "how dare they!" way. It's just... what is their ideal version of the game? Is it something that resembles Dark Souls as much as possible? That's the feeling I get and it seems a little sad. Even the area title pop up looks the same. Maybe Dark/Demon's are genre defining games and it's a worthwhile thing to copy them down to the small details, but what I love about Dark Souls is that it feels visionary and you're never going to exude that when copying someone else. Learn from the games, but make your own thing. I know what's unfair to them and to the game, it just struck me that even when presented with what's seemingly more of my favourite thing all I can think is I'd rather have something new. Again, I'll still probably play this though. If it's a good game it'll be because they made a good game and that's not easy even when you're imitating.

I'm digging this

Dog of Dracula 2 It's a comedic visual novel with an absurd cyberpunk setting. The writing is parodying noir, they lay on the metaphors pretty thick, but for the most part it's well done. The visuals are bad, but in a charming way. Give it a go.