Gamemore

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Posts posted by Gamemore

  1. Posted

    Animals ain't people, it's as simple as that.

    Now, you might discuss to what degree life dissimilar to human life deserves to be respected, but I don't think that the current means of discussing progressive issues such as gender equality, anti-racism, various privileges, etc. are ideal to conduct that discussion, since the underlying thought of most of these is that for instance, women are not in fact less inteligent than men, black people not naturally more prone to violence than white people and I doubt you'd get many people to agree with you that the same is true for chickens.

  2. Posted

    As I mentioned, the issue isn't so much about having hurt feelings. Targets of good satire will almost always have hurt feelings. Not that it was satire, but I told a bunch of people to go fuck themselves after all, which I still take responsibility for. Pretty sure I hurt some feelings. It is about whether or not it challenges or reinforces certain problematic power structures in our society. Nazis are a group defined by their ideology. Even though they are social pariahs and are widely hated for their beliefs, they are not a social underclass in the same way that race minorities are oppressed because of inane bigotry against their intrinsic natures.

     

    Conflating Nazism with Germany - while possibly not a strong example of punching down - is still poor taste because it reinforces a meaningless stereotype of Germans being Nazis, or Nazis being German - when the two are not causal and are simply a circumstance of a time and place where Nazism had the right conditions to flourish. Nazis should be mocked for their Nazism, not for being German or for living in poverty.

     

    I think if somebody wants to make good satire about Nazism today and the relationship it has with poverty they would do well to understand the conditions in Germany post WW1 where Nationalism became a strong identity among the working class who faced huge levels of unemployment as a result of the Depression.

     

    That's part of what has been frustrating me. Because people died and the rest of us were rightly saddened by this, we are wanting to pay some sort of tribute or honor to them for being killed in cold blood. As they should. But I think in our rush to call them heroes as if in death they have been washed of all their sins people have put them beyond all criticism of the fact that these are not the people protecting our freedoms. They did not deserve this, they are not at fault for this, but I am not Charlie Hebdo and they don't represent my idea of freedom.

     

    The sorts of illustrations that Bjorn lined to (thank you) I think are all that's necessary to pay tribute to them and honor them. Reposting their work is not necessary.

     

    And now for something completely different...

     
    5vawrt.jpg
     
    "Moslems"
     
    "growing jihadist cancer"
     
    Uuuuuuhhhhgghgghuuuhghghghfsgsredvdhaerq4238u5 -0WQRH-243 %13 6
     
    This is why free speech is a false promise, because this damn guy has more say over the world's media than any anyone targetted by islamophbia. People who need free speech the most are rarely afforded it.
     
     

     

    To clarify: In my example, I was talking about Neo-Nazis (although, nowadays I guess Nazi-skinheads would be considered "old Neonazis" since the preferred way for the movement to present itself has somewhat adjusted itself to match the times) and I mentioned them being German, because I am as well and most of the (thankfully brief) encounters I've had with and stuff I read about them has been with German Neo-Nazis, so I don't know if the impression I got of their major demographic ("White trash" projecting the blame for their disadvantaged position on immigrants/some undefined other, instead of acknowledging their own agency and the forces of the system they live in) would be accurate for other countries, although I wouldn't be surprised if it were.

  3. Posted

    There's something I don't understand about the whole "Comedy shouldn't punch downward" sentiment: What if the person or sentiment that is "beneath" our level or is held by people that are, is still really dumb and deserving of our scorn/ridicule. For instance, would it be immoral for me to make fun of the "classic", german Nazi-Skinhead-demography because in the 80's and 90's (and even now to some extent) they are mostly people that lost in society, are statistically likely to have a lower grade of education, income and social acceptance than me. Still, they also do believe that the people responsible for their shitty (at least doubtlessly shittier than mine) lot in life are people who have it even shittier than themselves and take it out on them and that is really stupid. Also, much of the stuff they say to justify their behaviour or explain their political platform is really bad and funny (such as explaining their opinion that "people what can't even speak proper german should go back to where they came from" when referring to someone whose family has been living in that town for three generations now.).

    Would it be mean for me as a relatively wealthy white guy who is currently at university to draw a cartoon that might end up hurting their feelings?

  6. Posted

    Medal of Honor Allied Assault had a pretty intense (and fucking hard) D-Day level where you did have a gun which however didn't do you any good for roughly two thirds of the level. It's a lot less impressive visually than Stalingrad in COD (due to the respective age of the games) but has a lot less scruples about just killing you at what appears to be random. It's especially funny since it's at about the halfway point of the game and so far you have been doing cool commando mission and suddenly the game's like "So you feel like hot shit? Well, maybe try standing somewhere without a billion machinegun bullets then, next time. Not there. Nope, not there either. Crouching's not gonna do you much good in the open either. Oh, look who found the barely marked minefield!"

  9. Posted

    There was a YouTube video I saw of a session of ArmA 2 and I wish I could find it again. It was one of those super serious invite only servers where everyone is ex-military and strict role-playing is enforced.

    This is to the best of my recollection.

    There was a team of 4 or 5 soldiers and everyone else were locals, around 30 players. Most of the locals were civilians, with a list of tasks to accomplish at locations around the map. However, a few were insurgents with the goal to kill or disable the soldiers in any way possible. The soldiers' job was to patrol a route, talk to and search the locals and kill or capture insurgents, following realistic ROE.

    The trick was, the civilians had instructions to become insurgents if they saw soldiers kill or arrest innocent civilians (i.e. someone who did not appear to be armed and where not, to their knowledge, insurgents) or if the soldiers made it impossible for them to accomplish their tasks.

    If you've listened to the podcast you know how invasive you can get with another player's avatar in the ArmA engine, searching them, tying them up etc. Since the soldiers had no idea who the insurgents were, every encounter with civilians was like the hyper paranoid encounters you hear about in DayZ and were really intense to watch.

    Tons of interesting (and scary) encounters came out of it. Since the civilian players were eager to do something more "interesting", encounters with the soldiers would frequently attract onlookers demanding the soldiers' justification for how they were treating the locals (hoping for an excuse to go rogue). The insurgents would constantly bait the soldiers to kill civilians. The soldiers pretty much immediately became the hyper aggressive dicks you'd expect the situation would turn them into.

    One highlight(?) was a sequence following a group of civilians who had to deliver a crappy, unloaded rifle to the far side of the map in a car (as a wedding gift, they decided). They were pulled over by the soldiers and immediately separated and interrogated. When the soldiers found the rifle, they decided the group were insurgents and tied them up (they weren't convinced by the wedding story). They then realized that they didn't have room in the truck for so many prisoners and considered killing them on the spot. Before they could decide, actual insurgents attacked, killing one soldier and wounding another. The soldiers were cut off from their truck and retreated into a nearby village, but not before spraying the wedding party with automatic fire, killing all but one.

    The insurgents untied the remaining civi and gave him a LAW rocket off the dead soldier. The newly converted fighter then stalked the soldiers with the other insurgents until he cornered one and ran at him suicidally, blowing both of them up with the rocket.

    Video games.

     

     

     

    Slightly off-topic, but as far as ARMA groups go, ShackTack is like the Marx Brothers in terms of seriousness. You'd be surprised at how many people get off by getting people to call them Sir on the internet (You actually wouldn't, probably)

  10. Posted

    Eh, I'd say the problem is less with who you're shooting at and more why you are shooting at them. In real life, many (if not most) soldiers engage in violence either because they have to conscription or they think it will lead to greater good (because they are genuinely defending their country, trying to install an (in their eyes) more benevolent government in other countries or subscribe to a worldview where a country must achieve dominance over others lest their culture gets destroyed), whereas the criminals in Hardline want (unearned) money for themselves and the cops are just trying to protect other peoples' property or lives. (Though I guess from the equipment and tactics the cops use in Hardline, it seems like it takes place in some sort of Orwellian police state and so the criminals might have more of a justification)

     

    Edit: Though this is more from a "how YOU might feel perspective", since I find it personally pretty hard to take offense at Multiplayer titles due to the fact that they never seem to condone certain actions the way a singleplayer title might. So, I guess I'm more worried about being queasy about shooting millions of Puerto Rican drug smugglers in the back of the head with a silenced pistol in the singleplayer campaign than I am about blowing Sgt. Ghostsnipa69666 up with a tripmine in multiplayer.

  11. Posted

    Eh, so, to get back on the Assasins' Creed stuff (sorry):

    If I understood it correctly, the co-op option is explained to each player that they are Arno and the other players are different assasins helping out that are actually the same model wearing a different jacket, but since 90% of their body is covered by clothes and the chinline by itself isn't really enough to positively identify someone Ubisoft figured nobody would really care apart from making funny Youtube videos where two guys dress up like each other. If that's the case (and if it isn't, I don't quite get what else they're gonna do), then why didn't they say so and add that apart from animations, they'd probably need to rewrite the story and re-record quite a lot of dialogue?

  14. Posted

    Ugh, yeah. Like I said, old wounds. Sorry, everybody!

     

     

    Yes, part of the Himalayas are in India, but those areas speak Pahari, not Hindi. If it's a fictional Himalayan state, it's a little odd for its residents to be speaking the language of their lowland neighbor.

     

    indicf.jpg

     

    Also, I've now seen it repeated in a few other places that what's wrong are the big-city accents as much as the choice of language. People are saying that Ubi must have just brought in some Indian immigrants to do all the "native" parts. Again, disappointing if true. I can't tell, but I'm inclined to defer to people with the ear to care.

    Well, I'm dumb.

  15. Posted

     

    Focusses a bit more on the gamey part of the gameplay, which looks pretty much like Far Cry 3 in a more interesting environment. I kind of like the idea of having drop-in co-op in an open world setting, far too little games realize you don't need extra missions to have fun blowing shit up with a friend.

    Notable quote "For the first time in a Far Cry game you'll be attacked from above.". I kinda doubt that this is really the first time. Far Cry and Far Cry 2 were three-dimensional, right?

     

    Also, as to the soldiers: Are we sure they are even supposed to be Nepalese? I thought the game was set in some sort of fictional kingdom and as far as I am aware part of the Himalaya is in Indian territory.

  16. Posted

    If I remember correctly, while falling into the general radio stations category, Mafia 2 had several instances where a certain song was scripted to come on at specific points in the story but you could always just change the station or get out of your car if you thought the creators had shitty taste.

  19. Posted

    Western Imperialism cannot exist without Westerners, of which there appear to be none in Far Cry 4 thus far (excepting that awful-looking Hurk DLC pre-order bonus).

    Much of the cold war was characterised by non-westerners fighting other non-westerners in order to propagate the interests of westerners as well as their own. Much of the conflicts of the post-cold war world are still heavily influenced by structures and systems that were instigated by westerners during earlier times. Considering the history of the region in question, I doubt that it is possible to completely leave out western imperialism (as well as later eastern imperialism) and still depict it with anything approaching verisimilitude.

  21. Posted

    If that's true then why wouldn't you lead with it in your initial marketing? If you're considerate enough to include a non-white character as your protagonist, then I hope you'd also be considerate enough to look at that promotional art and gauge what most reactions will be. Unless they wanted to go for that first shock and outrage so they could later pull out this protagonist and say to their detractors: "See, we're not racist! You are!"  

    I guess because if they are going the Far Cry 3 route of "wacky, edgy madness" they probably want to focus on the wacky, edgy villain rather than the protagonist who cares about his mom.

    And for what it's worth (very little): I perceived the guy on the box art as asian (perhaps with mixed parents) even before I saw it confirmed, so I guess it's not entirely unthinkable that they assumed it would be the same for most people.

  22. Posted

    The rapid enemy respawn, weapons breaking only applying to the player not the AI, the malaria (How does a experienced mercenary go to a malaria zone without meds?), your missions always being "secret" so all the AI attack you all the time, the map being limited in terms of its openness (lots of cliffs). 

     

    The game had a lot of cool mechanics and ideas, I just think it was very poorly implemented. 

    I think the problem Far Cry 2 faces is that it's situated in a very awkward spot between classic shooters and more hardcore sim/roleplaying experiences. I like that I can jump in and get a sometimes harrowing experiences that sort of feels more authentic than your average single-player shooter, without requiring the time it takes to get into more serious simulations such as Arma or having to put up with the general buggyness of games with an opener world (such as skyrim or again Arma)

  23. Posted

    21yiV5X.jpg

    Oh wow.

    To be fair, the novelizations of the later games are worse if anything. I can remember that the author of the Metal Gear Solid one thought it was a great idea to directly translate the games limited hand to hand combat moveset into the far too many fight sequences. At one point I think it's literally "Snake round house kicked two Genome soldiers."

    The german translation was pretty awkward too and kept stuff like "hell yeah" and "babe" in, which made every character sound like they were a bunch of kids raised in Rhineland-Palatia during the nineties whose only exposure to the english language had been through a battered (but uncut) VHS-copy of Commando.

     

    As for good novelizations: Does the Battletech/Mech Warrior stuff count? I can remember some of them being fairly entertaining military sci-fi in a pretty cool setting, but I guess they're based on the tabletop game rather than the PC stuff?

    Also noteable comic person Greg Rucka apparently wrote a tie-in novel for Perfect Dark Zero which isn't supposed to be half-bad, though I wouldn't know.