Thrik

What would you say is a more appropriate pejorative to use in any or all of the contexts discussed on this page then? Or are pejoratives in and of themselves — in seriousness or not — completely repugnant to you?

That's a topic in its own right really. I personally think that some can be very over-sensitive to gender-based terms, as if the use of them automatically makes someone a misandrist or misogynist. While this is certainly possible, I think that in the vast majority of cases it isn't actually so. It might be not be ideal, but many terms — at least in colloquial English — tend to have evolved to be directed more towards one gender or another. Men often receive things like 'dickhead', 'bastard', 'arse hole', 'wanker'; women are treated to 'bitch', 'slag', etc. There are countless examples of terms where as a native English speaker it feels more correct to use it for a certain gender, much like you'd automatically associate 'sweet ride' with a car despite it being equally applicable to a bike, boat, or plane. Why is this? Because language spreads in such way that it's intertwined with context and convention, not beliefs. What's interesting is that I use such terms quite interchangably. I can and do (somewhat jokingly) use terms like 'bitch' and 'twat' in reference to men during everyday conversation. When I do use it in reference to a woman though, singling me out as a misogynist seems inappropriate. The only possible reason to criticise me is because I'm perpetuating terms that should be considered as taboo as a racist slur — but is that really a suitable level to take this to? Whether you agree with it or not, use of such terms is very widespread and in many cases has no connotations of hatred for women or any of that nonsense. Automatically throwing words like 'misogynist' into the ring just because a fictional character uses the term for a female dog to refer to a female human is excessive. It doesn't imply any particular beliefs on the part of the writer, and it reflects real-world usage that is in itself not something that I consider particularly obscene. Reading too much into use of such words is unhealthy, and does no more to aid better treatment of men or women than chastising someone for checking out a girl's posterior or a guy's abs. Such over-sensitivity serves to do nothing but irritate and polarise people, and I'd be happy to see less of it.

Perhaps Miller's untimely and more or less pointless death in Metal Gear Solid 1 was a bit more justified than we thought. I don't mind arse holes being depicted, but it is nice when a semblance of karma is maintained. The shockingly racist Uncle Ruckus character in The Boondocks is a great example of this. Then again, fiction can be a lot more interesting and unpredictable when poetic justice is thrown out of the window.

I thought that the GTA4 driving was atrocious. Everything felt like a tank, and it was just impossible to really get good at whizzing around the streets (unless you put considerably more time into it than me I guess). I think that GTA5 strikes a perfect balance, as the vast majority of cars handle either very sharply but are easy to oversteer, or very loosely but are easier to control if you effectively use the (hand)brake. Once you learn the cars, you can quite easily select ones that appeal to your taste most, and that's not even mentioning the various mods you can make to the handling, etc. Added to GTA5's better systems for storing vehicles, I find my driving experiences much better this time around. I spent a lot of time with GTA4 and praise a lot of things about it, but its handling certainly isn't one of them. I feel that the overall way that the cars move in GTA5 is splendid. When you get involved with collisions it looks and feels excellent, and the damage mechanics are more realistic than in GTA4 too. Everything about the physics in this game I love.

Whoops, didn't even notice there were rules. I went a bit crazy on the last page.

That's very cute! It's also reminded me that I have a similar baby blanket somewhere from when I was born, with sheep on it. I must take some photographs of that in case disaster were to befall it (that would upset me a lot).

I think that a large part of VAC's effectiveness is that it doesn't make mistakes and its effects are permanent. It makes an excellent deterrent because it renders someone's copy of a game more or less useless if it's multiplayer. Of course, if it does in fact make mistakes then that's some pretty bad shit. I haven't come across it in my years using Steam (since launch), though.

Graphics comparisons galore: http://kotaku.com/metal-gear-solid-v-ground-zeroes-ps4-vs-xbox-one-vs-1550365253 PS4 seems to be considered the best-looking of the versions. The new-gen versions in general have some serious pros, including but not limited to 60 FPS rather than 30 FPS (Big deal!), higher resolution, much more detailed textures, and various environment effects that are properly snazzy. This is another reason for me to just wait until next year when I finally get a new-gen console and (hopefully) The Phantom Pain is out.

I've only caught snippets of what's meant to be in Ground Zeroes, but I can't say that I feel like it's appropriate to immediately condemn the developers for it. While the Metal Gear Solid series has always featured some pretty awkward stuff, it's also always tried to shine the spotlight on genuine issues. In a way, I feel that the series tries to draw people in using the bombast and craziness, and then hammers home some serious subject matter. With MGS1 it was nuclear proliferation, with MGS2 it was information control, with MGS3 it was the nature of war, and with MGS4 it was PMCs. And those weren't even the main themes. I was coincidentally watching a documentary the other day about the barbaric treatment of women by soldiers in the Congo as recently as this past few years, and the way that on a huge scale women over there are still gang raped, children and parents are forced to rape their families, women have scolding pieces of iron inserted into their genitals for days at a time, and countless other acts of insanely horrific violence. I think many people are also aware of bombs being inserted into people in the Middle East during recent years. Despite that, I think that awareness and especially action to try and aid what goes on over there is still relatively limited in the Western world. I can't say that I've become too familiar with the kind of issues Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain are tackling, but from the sounds of it they're attempting to bring home some of the horrors happening over there. And you know what? I'm completely OK with such stuff being depicted in fiction. If it causes people to feel some kind of emotion or empathy, perhaps it'll cause them to think twice about just brushing it aside when they next hear about yet more systematic abuse and torture of women in parts of the world where the stuff these audio logs allude to actually happens. I've seen people make jokes about some of the above, as if it's just a humorous fact of life that rape is a widespread thing there. I guess that for a lot of people, it's been background noise in the news for so long that it actually kind of is just an incidental quirk of the world. Could a game like MGS change those peoples' views by exposing them to graphic depictions of what such atrocities are like when they're not just text in a news article? Probably not, but at least it's trying. That's why I'm also totally fine with films and such that depict graphic rape, because despite its fictional nature it does make it more real for those who are used to just reading about it. The knee-jerk reaction seems to be assuming that Kojima and his crew just hate women and enjoy depicting them in such ways, almost like it's some kind of fantasy — but I don't think that's the case. Even if it's a little misguided or 'off', I think that a sincere effort is being made to highlight some of the horrors that exist in our world. The same applies to the B&B unit from MGS4, which definitely missed the mark but I could see what was being attempted. If even one person is affected by these games in a way that compels them to feel more strongly about such issues that's a win in my book.

Pretty Lights' music is pretty.

It's an interesting thing that despite the criticism of Ground Zeroes' price (which I agree is too expensive), many games — often indie — have come out during the past several years at similar prices and with comparatively no more gameplay. Just what is a game worth? WHAT IS GAME?

I have no idea what happened, it's pretty difficult to figure out from looking at the impact marks and tyre burns alone. I was just messing around on IRC when I heard a huge bang, followed by the horn remaining on GTA-style for over five minutes. I got out onto my balcony and that's what I was faced with.

If you were to contact anyone, it'd be Valve. It's Valve software operated by Valve, the individual developers have no say in anything to do with it. VAC is something that scans for anything fucking with DLLS, memory, etc while it's running, which is how most actual wallhacks and such work — it's not something with specific triggers defined on a game-by-game basis that its developers can control. That's how I understand it, anyway.

Thinking about it some more, I can see why Steam would ban single-player stuff too. In today's world of leader boards, achievements, gamer points, etc it can definitely cause some issues if people are cheating the system. I can imagine that if you were to somehow use cheat devices on a PlayStation or Xbox your accounts for those things would be at risk, so I guess the same applies to Steam. I'm not entirely comfortable with that, because using trainers and messing around with stuff has been a long-standing PC gaming tradition. Why shouldn't someone unlock everything in The Sims or Skyrim if they really want to? Maybe you should just be opted out of all the community shit for a game if you're detected cheating in the single-player experience rather than given an outright VAC ban. There is a bit of a 'CHEATERS ARE EVIL' thing in the PC world though, mainly because they are a legitimate pain in the ass when it comes to multiplayer games. Unfortunately I think that's resulted in some heavy-handed handling of things like this.

It seems unusual for you to end up in this situation as a result of cheating a single-player game, in my book that's completely acceptable — cheating is only bad when it affects the community at large. Valve has always been pretty vocal about VAC bans being permanent and never lifted, so you might not have much luck getting anything done about it. However, VAC bans are game-specific so long as they aren't Valve games. If they are Valve games, you're banned from all of them. Unfortunately, it does mean that your Steam ID will likely lose that 'in good standing' status.

A rather sextacular rendition of the Curse of Monkey Island theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh46lhHttkM

Just go for grotty stubble. I think an actual beard would look pretty bad on me.

Agreed, just call off the bet. Unless your relationship is really weird, it shouldn't be difficult.

And for today's balcony view, we have:

The mentality I struggle with when it comes to weight loss is a constant self-reassurance of 'Oh, I'll take it seriously next week and just have one last few days of pigging out — I'll definitely be in shape in time for X!'. Then X comes along and I've just been doing that same thing week after week, so I either crash and subsequently put it all back on, or fail. Eventually, X will be the day that I die. With that said, I have managed some success this year with the more sustainable approach mentioned above. I've been using an app by Fitocracy called 'macros', which technically is a calorie tracker but it doesn't actually let you input calories. Instead, you have to input the protein/carb/fat trio for everything (it finds the optimal targets for you based on weight and exercise levels). At first I baulked at this because calories just seem so easy to track. But let me tell you, tracking it this way provides some serious insight into why your eating habits suck. For example, like how that one can of Coke (or several sugary coffees) is your entire carb allowance for the day. As such, I've drastically adjusted what I eat — more emphasis on pure protein/fat during the daytime — and as a result I'm feeling much more energised, I'm less constantly hungry, and the weight is dropping at a steady but consistent rate. If I can keep this up I'll be sorted for the end of the year, whereas my previous bullshit cycle of failure would most likely just keep going for years. I guess I should have realised that my old approach was stupid; no matter which fad I used (beans diet, protein-only diet, nutrition bar diet, salad diet, shake diet) it was ultimately the same broad method destined for failure. Stopping the 'I'll do it tomorrow!' shit the hardest but must important part.

Fault it, I cannot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbipGn__RF8

This is one of my all-time game music favourites: OK, that's not actually the original. It's a (very authentic) high-definition remake as the SNES version doesn't have very much clarity sadly. But man, it just takes me straight back to the thick and enveloping atmosphere some of DKC's levels had. Of course, then DKC2 came along and there was even more emphasis on the darker visual and musical themes: ^ The beauty of 1:30 was contrasted by it accompanying some of the most ferociously difficult levels I've encountered in any game ever Shit, the music was on fire for these games.

That looks awesome. Is that the Team Fortress 2 Soldier?

Agreed, chuck some

Jesus, I was scrolling without paying attention to names and definitely thought that was Remo.