Zeusthecat

I'd be fine if she was just a little interrupty but she takes it to a whole new level. Chris Remo is at least respectful to others and does a good job at catching himself whenever he goes a little overboard with the interrupting thing but Leigh is just overly loud, obnoxious, and rude to literally anyone who tries to start talking once she's started on one of her tirades. I don't know why but her know-it-all attitude just gets under my skin and is insanely irritating.

I'm continuing to go through the Giant Bombcast backlog and this podcast is so much better than I thought it would be based on my initial impressions. These guys really put together a fantastic show. Right now I am listening to one of the E3 2010 podcasts with Leigh Alexander as one of the guests and I have to say she is incredibly obnoxious. I thought she was a fairly well respected journalist but both times I have heard her on the podcast, she has been incredibly rude, loud, and overly opinionated to a point that I just can't bear to listen to the episode any more. I just can't help but cringe at the fact that everyone is trying to be polite to her despite the fact that she just rudely interrupts every single person who tries to say more than three words with shouting and crazy opinions. Are these just isolated incidents or is she really as obnoxious as she appears on these casts?

Thank you for the very informative post feelthedarkness. So I guess my next question would be: with the unnecessary increases in funding for the police force and all this crazy SWAT-type equipment they are getting, are there corresponding policy changes that explicitly give the police more freedom to use deadly force without repercussions or is the increase in aggression an unintended side effect of funding and equipment being beefed up? On a personal, somewhat unrelated note, I have always had a (not necessarily justified) deep distrust of the police force and I think it is disgusting how prevalent these incidents involving police brutality have become. From old ladies getting tased to countless incidents of police shooting first and asking questions later, my faith in the effectiveness and fairness of our police force is very low. There is no guarantee that people joining the police force are upstanding citizens with just intentions and I feel like they go to great lengths to protect the interests of their officers to the detriment of the general populace. Also, I live in the jurisdiction of Joe Arpaio so seeing police departments ruthlessly defend their officers when they are accused of abusing their powers in horrible ways is something that I see too much of. All that being said, I am still okay with this game being made and I don't have a problem separating it in my mind from the realities of the world we live in and I still just view it as a fun cops versus robbers game. I think it is perfectly fair for people to be offended by the themes in this game and I can't argue against how problematic they are but personally, the game being skinned this way doesn't bother me.

Can someone explain to me what it means for police to become militarized and examples of how that is happening in the US? I realize I am completely ignorant on this subject and I would like to understand it more so that I can have a more well informed opinion.

Yes! Thank you for saying what I was trying to get at in a much more concise and coherent way.

My problem with it is that they don't go anywhere with that fact beyond just mentioning it offhand (and iirc they never brought up the fact that they can place ads on their servers as another option to generate revenue). My beef here is that this is the second article from Polygon focusing squarely on how this negatively impacts the Minecraft community without any attempt to present the other perspective. There is just nothing of substance that convinces me that this is the problem people are making it out to be.

Here's Colin Campbell's piece on the Minecraft EULA situation. As expected, it is pretty one sided and focuses exclusively on how these changes are supposedly going to bring an end to a bunch of these "wonderful" Minecraft servers and put people out of jobs. What's most disappointing about this piece for me is that it seems to completely gloss over the fact that these servers are still free to charge whatever server fees they want (as long as they are the same for everyone), they are allowed to put ads on their servers to generate revenue, and they can still charge for cosmetic items. The fact that all of the testimonials in this article boil down to "this is a bad change and will kill our business" without any real explanations as to why these other sources of revenue aren't viable makes it really hard for me to sympathize with these people. If I am supposed to take this article seriously, it would have been nice to at least have one of these people quoted in the article go a little bit more into detail regarding exactly how their current business model works and specifically why they wouldn't be able to adjust that model to comply with the EULA.

Who's that guy feeding you?

I refuse to partake in the summer sale this year (although I'm sure I will be very tempted by it). I've played maybe one game out of the dozen or so I bought last summer and I am determined to not purchase any games on Steam until I get through my 20ish game backlog.

Fair enough.

I think Polygon is being very one sided in this issue and I think it is fair of him to point out such a glaring example of that. By the wording of the questions in that email they are being pretty clear about what their stance is and I don't blame Notch for preempting whatever article they were going to put up about it by posting an image showing just how ridiculous and unprofessional those questions were.

From what I've gathered, it came up recently because some parents were complaining to Mojang about their kids spending hundreds of dollars in game to gain certain advantages on whatever servers they were on. I guess it's always been in the EULA and this prompted Mojang to decide to step in and start enforcing that aspect of it. People are still allowed to charge for access to their servers and they can still charge for cosmetic items. This only affects people running servers where people can essentially pay money to get an advantage in the game. From my perspective, paying to gain an advantage in this game completely breaks what makes this game so great. I think it makes sense for them to crack down on this if for no other reason than to preserve the core nature of the game. If it were me, I certainly wouldn't want the practices of some of these servers to tarnish the image of my game for those people that might jump right into a server and mistake those practices as a core part of the Minecraft gameplay.

So I guess some people aren't happy about Mojang's crackdown on pay to win Minecraft servers I think it is utterly ridiculous that people are making such a big deal about it and I personally think it is a totally fair stance for Mojang to take. Also, I think the exchange shown here between Polygon's Colin Campbell and Notch is a total load of shit. Those are some pretty loaded questions.

I can't recommend anything for the WiiU as I don't have one but I just found out this last weekend that Mario Kart Double Dash is pretty much the perfect game for a 4-5 year old. After a couple of races, my daughter had a full grasp on how to fire items in both directions and bash into other drivers when they got close. Sorry that this post in no way answers what you were asking.

I don't see why this game would have to be serious just because it's using the cops versus robbers theme. I don't really like the notion that certain themes like this should only be done in a serious manner.

I think it really depends on the tone they go with in the game. If they just go with a dumb, fun cops vs robbers thing (something virtually every human being played growing up) then I really don't think there is an issue here. I think they are more likely to fuck up if they do try to attach some kind of message or deeper meaning than if they just give us a big playground to go "bang bang" at each other.

I don't think it was bread after all. But I did eat some sourdough toast for dinner last night.

For the last couple hours, I've been smelling what I think is sourdough bread and it has been quite pleasant. But I'm just now starting to realize that it might actually just be some sour smelling rotten shit in the trash. I'm not sure if I should keep enjoying the smell and just tell myself if it is sourdough bread or if I should be totally grossed out. A part of me wants to solve this mystery and another part of me wants to remain ignorant.

I picked this up a couple weeks ago and after putting a decent amount of time in this last weekend, everything finally started to click and the game is starting to get pretty fun. At the start, this game does not leave the best impression. The driving controls are really hard to get used to, especially after spending so much time with the excellent driving controls in GTA V, and it seems to take a little while before you actually have enough hacking abilities unlocked to really dig in to the game. For a while there, I actually wasn't sure if this was going to be very enjoyable. Escaping the police was overly difficult and frustrating, I couldn't seem to figure out how to effectively take out pursuing cars as I was driving, and the hacking missions didn't seem to have a lot of depth to them. Despite my initial frustrations with the game however, I pushed through and am now really enjoying myself. I finally managed to figure out how to hack various environmental elements at the right time to take out pursuing cars which actually makes car chases pretty damn fun. There is a Burnout style slow motion crash cam that shows when you take down a car and I find that it is a nice little touch that makes the process of kiting dudes around the city and slowly taking them out with various elements very satisfying. I've also managed to fall into a nice rhythm with the various hacking missions, making them a lot more fun to play. I tried the non-lethal approach for a little bit but ended up abandoning that when I realized it was a lot more fun to just use all of the tools and hacks the game gives you to tackle missions in a variety of different ways. Now that I have a good handle on the different approaches I can take in a mission, I have come to really appreciate the way they flow and how effective the stealth mechanic is. My strategy is typically to stand right outside the entrance of the compound and hack into a camera to start scoping out the area. Once I have a good idea of where all the enemies are I start to make my way into the compound and silently take out enemies around the perimeter as I slowly make my way in, using whatever hacks and distractions I need to to make sure that I can take each on out in a spot where none of the other enemies will notice the body. Then, once it's down to a few clusters of enemies I will typically identify any of the remaining enemies that have explosives on them and set those off to try to whittle each group down. Then depending on the situation, I will either leave the last few non-critical guys alone and finish the mission, or finish the rest of them off to make sure that I have no resistance when I go to exit the compound. I would also echo what JonCole said regarding the story. Going off of what I've read on various gaming sites, I expected the story to be total shit but it's a lot better than I think most people give it credit for. Aiden's gruff voice is kind of cheesy at first but I think he is a totally okay character and I am enjoying the story so far. As it stands right now, I am glad I picked up this game and I can't wait to play more. And on a quick side note, I really like the profiling feature in this game. The brief descriptions for each NPC and the various conversations you can eavesdrop on go a long way towards making this feel like a living, breathing world. I regularly find myself just walking around hacking citizens and reading their descriptions between missions and I think what they did in this game is a good step towards making open worlds with lots of NPCs feel more alive.

It's really stupid and an absolute abomination.

I don't really have any interest in the Hardline beta but I have been playing BF4 on PS4 for the last couple weeks and goddamn that game is fun. With the recent patches it is working wonderfully and I have yet to run into any of the issues that were plaguing the game previously. If anyone wants to join up, I've been playing fairly regularly in the evenings with a few other friends. PSN ID: xXZeusthecatXx

I found it a bit weird at first but after getting used to it, I thought it was pretty impressive how clearly they managed to communicate what you could interact with based purely on what Manny looked at as you walked around. I do prefer EMI's style where each of the items you can interact with in your immediate vicinity are also shown as text at the bottom of the screen but I think GF's environments were laid out well enough that the 'look' mechanic by itself was perfectly adequate.

I played some more last night and didn't really get anywhere. I hopped on a raft in a foggy swamp area but Guybrush indicated that I would need a map or compass to get anywhere. Then I went over to some creepy mansion where I found Ozzie Mandrill and challenged him to some insult sword fighting. Unfortunately, his Australian insults were impossible to counteract and I was forced to leave. I then went around and re-investigated various areas around the town to refresh my memory a bit on what the hell is going on. From what I can tell, getting through the swamp seems to be the thing I need to do right now so my focus will be on trying to get some kind of compass or map to help me through. I'm not going to lie, I am not nearly as excited about booting up this game as I have been with the previous LucasArts games. It just feels so much more tedious and drawn out than what I've become accustomed to. There are definitely some bits of story and dialog that I like and I think are pretty clever but I just keep feeling a little overwhelmed with all of the seemingly random items I have and all of the information that has been thrown at me from various characters.

Point being that a species that is possibly millions of years more advanced than us would probably be a hell of a lot more clever than us. Is it really that inconceivable that the math these species might use to differentiate their signals from completely random signals would be advanced enough to allow them to send signals that are seemingly random to us?