Ninja Dodo

I think it stopped being civilized when Manny told me I knew nothing about Hitler and called me a cunt.

Manny: 51% of America is retarded. As for you, Zero, you may notice history hasn't thanked the Germans. Whether you are just blind or simply have no morals, you all deserve whatever crap you get the next four years.

This better be true. If it is though, why in the hell did Kerry conceed defeat?!

I'm sure Bush wouldn't mind changing the constitution in the meantime to allow for foreign nationals to become president...

Ah, but that's forgetting the fact that Bush is a hypocrit about everything else...- torture... very evil, unless we do it... and they're bad guys. - democracy... buy your votes today! Special discount! - nuclear disarmament... If you don't get rid of your evil weapons of mass-destruction we will nuke you. Maybe. - freedom for all... unless you're a suspicious muslim, or any foreigner, really... - Abortion is WRONG! Bombing people... GOOD. Abortion... BAD. - well, etcetera...

The FBI can kiss my ass.** and I don't live in the US anyway...

Well I don't really know that much about his policies, but the fact that he actively supports Bush is scary enough for me.

Don't make me laugh. The Bush administration doesn't give a crap about freedom, neither yours nor anyone else's. All they care about is money and more money, and how they get it is incidental. Bush is responisible for the deaths of many more innocents than Bin Laden. Something to think about...

Thankfully they were so incompetent that the entire cabinet imploded before you could say "new election". Of course then the right-wing Christians stole the election from Dutch Labour so we're not that much better off, but at least we're not shipping Turks and Moroccans off to camps just yet. Although there's no telling what certain populists will come up with. Is it true that Wilders said something like "Of course what the SS did was wrong, but you have to respect their drive and efficiency."? Something I heard.

I'm making T-shirts.

Demonized. I hate hate hate that bloody word, especially because that fool Fortuyn added it to the Dutch language and suddenly everybody was demonizing everybody. It's a lame token response to any and all criticism that does considerably more harm than good. And make no mistake, he may have not been as bad as some extremists in his views, but he was to all intents and purposes most definitely a xenophobic right-wing extremist, and the popularity his slightly milder approach gained him actually made him a more dangerous extremist than your average foulmouth neo-nazi. Even if, for a moment, like hypothetically, we assume that Fortuyn wasn't a dangerous right-wing extremist, then there is still no question that his avid following was...

It was funny at the time, now it's just scary.

Oops. Yeah, Austria. I actually knew that, I just kind of, er, forgot. Good thing Germany is still run by sensible people, but I'm sure I did read something about a right wing party at some point. Maybe it was a regional thing.

I would second that recommendation of Holland if it wasn't for the shite government we're stuck with right now. The problem, it seems, is that in every single country, every now and then the majority gets it into their thick heads that liberal government sucks and the country needs to be taken over by right wing extremists. This happened with Fortuyn in Holland and in France they had to choose between right-wing Chirac and nazi Le Pen, Switserland seems to keep being overrun by Haider, and didn't some right wing party win in Germany as well recently? ... and of course where I am at the moment, the UK, it's hardly any better with Bush' big buddy Blair.

GROOAAAAR, says I.

I'm sorry, what?My grandmother was in the resistance. I know damn well who Hitler was and I dare say I know a hell of a lot more than you. How you can defend Bush is beyond me. Either you have no clue or no morals... I guess you also don't grasp that there is a difference between saying two things are similar and saying they are the same. I never said that the systematic slaughter of the Jewish people is comparable to the war crimes that Bush has comitted (and will now apparently continue to commit) but there are nevertheless many similarities between these two dangerous individuals. Both were elected democratically and were loved and hated in equal measure by their people, both bent the truth to breaking point with shameless propaganda, and both were fundamentally convinced of their self-righteous and misguided cause. The sad thing is that Bush gets to have another go at it. As Moosferatu rightly points out, making a certain part of history taboo is stupid. It's happened before and it could very well happen again. The way we prevent this is by learning from the mistakes of the past, not ignoring them.

Why not? Bush has people 'legally' tortured in Cuba and Iraq, he invades countries for financial gain and self-righteous religious fundamentalism, and he's turning the American judicial system into "1984" *cough*Patriot Act*cough*. Just because everybody has a knee-jerk reaction to the comparison doesn't mean it can't be made. Bush himself is most likely just a puppet, but this comparison applies to his administration as a whole. It reeks of despotism.

There's some hope still for Kerry, but frankly I'm disgusted that it could even come to this. Seriously, Americans would re-elect Hitler if he had the right campaign.

My first name being Björn I'm going to have to go with the bear, what with the first name I actually use (Christiaan) really being my second name. Ah the confusion...

Meh... I think simple stylised designs work better than intricate drawings. Plus the point is not so much showing an eye as it is showing that specific symbol, the "wadjet", also known as the Eye of Horus. It's supposed to have protective attributes and such but I'm not a superstitious person, so I don't really care about that. I do however really like ancient egyptian history and art.

I've been considering getting this as a tattoo: ... but looking around the web it seems to be not entirely uncommon. I'd prefer to do something original.

I think the english voice-over contributes to 90% of the art director's lameness though. It probably sounds considerably better in the guy's own words.

You have a point, and I think I play games in a very similar way to you... I too like to savour every little bit of the game world and its inhabitants. However, I don't know if it's a short attention span, lacking memory or something else, but I really, really, deeply, hate interrupting stories. If I get a book I'll usually read it cover to cover in a few days. If I play a game that's got even a hint of narrative, I feel compelled to play it for long stretches at a time, rather than just play maybe one or two hours a day. Now there's a difference between making time and having time and putting aside all other business for 50 hours of semi-continuous epic goodness, while satisfying isn't always very practical. I can get away with this in the summer cause I've got all the spare time I want, but in the middle of the academic year it's not really doable.

I think games should be short, sweet and affordable. Who has time for 50 hour epics anyway? Couldn't they make an equally awesome game within 30 hours? I think a lot of games are really stretching the gameplay to clock an impressive number of hours, when they could have put all the awesomeness in a shorter and more effective game (which can then be made cheaper).

I don't know what PC Zone Benelux is like these days, cause it's been years since I perused a copy, but PC Zone UK is a farce. They're so blatantly selling out to publishers it's embarrassing. Their coverage of Unreal 2 was a particularly painful example, but I'm sure there's plenty more. PC Gamer isn't too bad, and it has interesting articles every now and then, but I still take the reviews with a rather oversized grain of salt. The only magazines I've found myself able to genuinely respect are PC Gameplay in the Benelux and Edge over here in the UK.