Cordeos

I have really been enjoying Subnautica. Its by the same people who made Natural Selection 2. The game is currently in early access, but is getting regularly patched and is coming along nicely. They just released a patch greatly expanding on the smaller submarine and are now working on a new biome. The game is set on an ocean world where you are they only survivor of a space ship crash. You are always managing your oxygen while scavenging for scarce resources. There is an optional hunger and thirst system that I don't play with due to it not being fully fleshed out yet. There is a constant drive to go to deeper and more dangerous biomes to unlock new technology and get better resources. Because you spend most of your time underwater there is an added layer of threat because the predatory fish could be anywhere around you. The devs have also made the decision to make fighting the predatory fish very difficult. Your knife does very little damage and is more useful in driving the fish off than actually killing it. There are other weapons that let you push fish away from you or temporarily freeze or trap them. Currently the only good way to kill hostile creatures is to ram them with the larger submarine. Something that annoyed me at first, but makes a lot of sense in making the game more difficult is that items in your inventory do not stack. This slows down resource gathering pretty well.

Turn based over map with real time battles. (Total war style I assume). They don't get into if and how you get more ships, but I love the captains system. " instructing a captain to pull out of combat when his ship had taken a certain amount of damage. Perhaps you want him to disengage early because you’ve spent a fortune upgrading his weapons systems, or because the crew are particularly talented and should definitely live to fight another day. Whatever the case, as soon as the threshold is reached, he should activate his warp drive and scarper. A particularly brave captain might refuse the order, however, insisting that his crew be reduced to space dust rather than retreating. At this point, you have a choice – allow him to follow his dreams of glory/death, or put your foot down and force obedience. If you choose the former course, dissent within the ranks will grow and other captains will become more likely to rebel against orders, but if you rattle the chain of command, a ‘Blame’ point will be assigned to the captain. If he accrues three, he’s for the chop, publicly executed to set an example. All glory to the Emperor." http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/01/21/first-look-battlefleet-gothic-armada/ This game and the announcement of Warhammer: Total War have me pretty excited for the future of Warhammer and 40k RTS.

There was an Imperial ship in the FPS Fire Warrior.

I just finished Assassins Creed: Rogue which is a decent sequel to Black Flag. I will still suggest Black Flag over Rogue as the game to play to get the ship combat, but that's just because the world of Black Flag is larger and better realized. Rogue has made a few fun changes to the standard AC formula, unfortunately few of these were part of the ship game play, which is the part I enjoy more. In one of the two naval maps there are icebergs you can shoot to damage and destroy smaller ships, which can be fun, enemy ships will also occasionally board you which is a neat reversal of game play from Black Flag. The real changes are in the more classic AC game play of city exploration. Since you are playing as a Templar this time around you have to be on the lookout for assassins trying to take you out. Occasionally you will hear whispering and have to either find or avoid an ambush, it definitely spices up city exploration in a way no other AC game has. Similarly there is a new side mission called assassin interception, you have to track down multiple assassins while they get in position, you get 3-5 minutes before they will start trying to kill the target. They were a fun new mission type, but nothing too special. Overall Rogue is a decent game I enjoyed playing, but nothing revolutionary. I am interested in trying out Freedom Cry which was a standalone expansion for Black Flag. I really just want more ship combat/piracy game play. Maybe the upcoming Warhammer Man O’ War Corsair will scratch that itch without being tied to a landlubber series.

Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango and The Neverhood are all great.

20,000,000 He does a lot of work tracking violence throughout human history, not just in the 20th and 21st centuries. For example dueling is no longer legal or prevalent. The slave trade has declined significantly since the 1800s and is illegal in every country. Beating children is no longer acceptable in many countries. Torture and capital punishment have seen similar declines and legal sanctions. This article goes very in depth on a lot of his information and has graphs that go way back beyond modern times: http://www.quora.com/What-was-the-most-devastating-war-in-human-lives-adjusted-for-world-population "Here we see 2500 years of human history, with White's top 100 atrocities, which I have scaled by the estimated size of the world population at the time. As you can see, World War II just barely makes the top ten.... Now this funnel-like concentration of points in the last few centuries does not mean that in ancient times they only committed big atrocities, whereas now we commit both big and little atrocities. It's rather an artifact of "historical myopia": the closer you get to the present, the more information you have. The smaller atrocities in the past were trees falling in the forest with no one to hear them, or not even deemed worthy of being written down." Another good article on this. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111904106704576583203589408180

There are issues with how ownership works for software. There are also problems with profiting from mods of that software. Music has different rules and a different culture about fair use. I know the Skywind mod (remaking Morrowind in Skyrim) had to negotiate with Bethesda and have the mod verify an install of Morrowind so they could avoid legal issues. I always got the sense that Japanese game devs don't really support modding. Not saying any of this stuff would stand up in court. EDIT: While digging into the legality of modding I ran into this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Star_v._FormGen_Inc. Essentially FromGen successfully sued Mirco Star for selling a CD of Duke Nukem 3D mods.

Pinker is more focused on war, domestic violence, rape, murder. He looks are rates per population as opposed to raw numbers, because world population keeps increasing raw numbers have different meanings in terms of likelihood of any specific individual dying violently. But as these things decline so do the environments that allow sex slavery and refugee crisis to exist. I agree there are still huge problems in the world, but I have seen no good data that the lives of the majority of humans is getting worse and have seen plenty showing the opposite. "Objectively, there has indeed been an uptick in war deaths in 2013 compared to 2012 (it’s too early to have data for 2014), mostly due to the war in Syria. But the overall level of deaths is still far below those of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, when the world was a far more dangerous place. Even putting aside the obvious examples (such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the 3- million-death war in Vietnam), one sees that the conflicts of today are far less damaging than those of past decades. For instance, the 1980s saw an eight-year war between Iran and Iraq that killed more than half a million people and threatened to block the flow of oil from the Persian gulf, which would have brought the world economy to a standstill. A decade before, the Yom Kippur War killed 12,000 people (six time as many as died in Gaza in 2014)," http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/has_the_decline_of_violence_reversed_since_the_better_angels_of_our_nature_was_written.pdf more on the decline of poverty: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/opinion/the-end-of-poverty-soon.html I have hope that a decline of violence globally and a decline of poverty globally will eventually result in a strengthening of humanism as it has in the past.

We successfully overcame the last gilded age, I have no doubt we can overcome this one. The world is getting less violent and less impoverished. We have new issues that seem insurmountable, we overcame a world where dictatorship was the only form of government, where most of the globe was controlled by brutal colonial governments, where the threat of total annihilation of our species was a constant threat. Humanity is becoming better, kinder, gentler and more connected all the time and I have no doubt that we will be able to overcome this new set of challenges, and whatever challenges come up next. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-decline-of-violence/ http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21578643-world-has-astonishing-chance-take-billion-people-out-extreme-poverty-2030-not

I have always had problems with Zizek, he spends so much time trying to make old theories on colonialism and capitalism fit the modern context using tired socialist rhetoric. I am also saddened by him spending far more time attacking the left than the right. There is a reason socialist parties are weak worldwide, they are so busy demanding ideological purity that they lose any allies they might have. I usually agree with his points, but I hate how he makes them.

Turkey's AKP government seems hell bent on bringing about a bloody civil war with the Kurds, possibly complete with ethnic cleansing. There has been nationalist (see fascist) attacks on the Kurdish political party HQ in Ankara. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34193733 There have been ground incursions into Iraq to attack PKK bases. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34183797 There is a city in Turkey that the military is essentially occupying/putting under siege. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34206924?post_id=10106190119912010_10106670816332530#_=_ All of this seems to have more to do with weakening Kurdish political power and shoring up support for the AKP than any actual security issues involving the PKK with who there has been a cease fire for 2 years now. But not anymore. There is also a continuing clamp down on press freedom in the country, usually for doing things like posting phonecalls implicating ruling party members in corruption. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34195807

There is a gameplay trailer now. Sure looks shiny.

Foreign Policy magazine just launched their podcast today, so far a solid round table and a discussion of an interesting documentary. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/foreign-policy-podcast/id1034003458?utm_content=buffere0cee&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

somehow kidnapping and dissapearing people is more moral than murder.

I finished Dishonored on Saturday. I am lukewarm on it. I don't enjoy games that give you tons of tools to kill people with, then encourage you not to use them. I might do a violent playthrough just to actually use some of the offered powers. I found the stealth to be a big letdown because of how linear and small the levels were. Teleporting around would be so much cooler if there wasn't one obvious stealth path to teleport along.

I just picked it up yesterday. So far I am enjoying it. The naval combat feels like Black Flag, but with a few changes. The biggest change is that enemy ships board you sometimes and you have to drive them off. There are also icebergs you can shoot to generate waves that hurt smaller ships. There are more changes with the land based game. There are now assassins hunting you, so sometimes you hear whispering and have to use eagle vision to hunt them out or they will try and kill you. They also added some different side missions like assassin interception. Its also just a bit odd being on the same side as the authorities. Right now I am doing my standard thing of trying to unlock and buy all the upgrades as soon as the game opens up. I just have a lot of fun with a fully upgraded ship trashing everyone else.

One of my friends was playing GoW while his dad was watching, he kept failing that minigame and his dad was making fun of him.

Yes so much this! I have always been annoyed with the sloppy application of literature and/or philosophy in Japanese games. "feels like someone giving a book report without having read the book" is a great definition of this.

Pretty astounding how different the current PM of Hungary is from the previous one: "We don't want to, and I think we have a right to decide that we do not want a large number of Muslim people in our country," Orban said. "We do not like the consequences of having a large number of Muslim communities that we see in other countries, and I do not see any reason for anyone else to force us to create ways of living together in Hungary that we do not want to see. That is a historical experience for us." http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/9/3/hungary-prime-minister-says-muslims-not-welcome-amid-refugee-crisis.html "the former Prime Minister of Hungary, Ferenc Gyurcsany, goes further. Mr Gyurcsany and his family take-in groups of refugees who spend a night or two at his home. It's all part of an initiative set up by a local volunteer group." http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p031g1qc

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-09-04-metal-gear-solid-5-quiet-kojima-ashamed Fantastic article about what is wrong with Quiet and scantily clad women video game women in general. "So, as per Kojima's original statement, should we be ashamed of our words and deeds regarding the knee-jerk reaction to Quiet's unveiling - and the Quiet action figure with the squeezable Tits that followed? Well, no, and I've seen nothing to suggest that we should. I can't see how Quiet's nakedness serves any other purpose than to provide wank fodder, and I don't see how she's an 'antithesis' to other women in gaming who have been excessively exposed. And that's fine; if you want to lust after big wobbling digital Tits, you go forth and be the best you you can be. But let's not pretend it's anything grander than that."

There is a thread for this: https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/6762-anyone-remember/ Good luck!

I am definitely waiting for both Oculus and Steam VR to come out before I decide which one to by. I have seen some disappointing interviews about exclusivity and the Oculus that makes me wary of it. I really worry that a too walled off VR ecosystem this early could really do a lot of damage.

What does it mean for Kojima to "artistically" decide to put unnecessary bikini clad characters in his games?

So an artist opening a strip club because he artistically likes strip clubs is better than someone just opening one as a business? I just don't see how art makes skeezy behavior more sympathetic.

Are you building a zoo? I would love to see how the plane deals with picking up a bear and dropping it off at the base.