syntheticgerbil

They're drinking the tap water man, the CIA is poisoning them with flouride so that they can cause perpetual civil unrest for those who share certain water tanks in preparation for the New World Order.

Haha they already apologized same day: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/121533-Deep-Silver-Apologizes-for-Mutilated-Dead-Island-Torso

It always warms my heart every time I see a Calvin and Hobbes strip saying something I would have glazed over as a child but understand and nod my head to now.

Reported to the FBI.

Are launch codes for nuclear missiles really an existing thing? I always figured that was a taken artistic license in Metal Gear Solid.

Besides the arm blades, what part of this character is unique? It's just Natalie Portman with bigger boobs and crotch out. She's already been in Prince of Persia, and she's tending to be as popular as Ellen Paige in games now. Also Grasshopper Manufacturer already made this character: Guess what? Kaede was the most boring in Killer 7 as well.

I've been arguing about this so much the last week after not wanting to bother at first. I think at the very least we could just ban semi automatics and automatics, since they are guns for the purpose of spraying bullets. There's no reason any regular citizen should own these. If you're truly in danger, make do with your hand gun like an action hero, I say (I mean you did do that training, right Mr. Gun Owner?). But when you say that the nutty right wingers will argue that they need big weapons so that they can protect themselves from a government takeover. Well here's some fucking news, the government is going win. I don't recall the Branch Davidians owning a tank, but okay. I tend to think people who stockpile weapons legally are mentally unstable in the first place. I have never met someone who owns many guns (I live in Texas) who has not given me the creeps. From my experience, they tend to be backwards simpletons with paranoia issues. I'd personally feel more safe if the government owned the majority of the guns than some of these redneck wackos with cases full of assault rifles. Then there's street crime which I don't think major gun control will ever fix because it's caused by poverty and a sense of desperation and danger, which is more of a fault of the government than mental instability in my opinion. Either way the casual criminal doesn't tend to have a stockpile since that costs money (druglords withstanding), and most of the time it tends to be handgun crime with one person dead. But I mean I don't own a gun, nor do I ever plan to. If I were in some crisis situation, I'd find a different way to deal with it. I guess if we were to compromise laws, I'd only make handguns, rifles, and shotguns legal, since I don't know what is legal in most other countries that have way less gun violence than the United States. Those seem like things where a mass murderer could be at least be apprehended a little bit easier. But the way I really feel is, it's almost a pointless debate because even with the 2nd amendment arguments, I think the bigger problem is weapons manufacturers in general and whose palms they are greasing in our government. Corporations will always have more money than any citizen so they'll run the laws according to their profit margin. So until we get some stricter campaign finance reform, I don't think it'll happen in any serious fashion. All sorts of weapons are intertwined in our economy, importing and exporting.

After playing MGS4, I could see myself now getting into the military for the slight chance I could pilot a Metal Gear Rex.

I'm not sure you understand where I stand. You seem to think I have only an issue with the existence of a panty shot and big boobs. I don't even think there's any ill conceived commentary happening here, I'm pretty sure it's just a thing I'm sure the developers thought was awesome unless you can show otherwise. I think you need to tie the imagery together with that slo mo rotating shot and just look at that alone. When I think of indulgence I think of fun, not grotesque. On the note of Ghost in the Shell, I find it a very vapid movie and series caked in gratuitousness which I will hardly ever understand the love for. Plus you could just watch Blade Runner instead and get more out of it. On the other hand I find Akira, with it's similar presentation ultraviolence, having characters that actually invoke emotion and motivation for their actions and the way the animation and visuals are presented. The original comic is even more heartwrenching. This game's trailer just seems an exercise in what dudes find cool. I can imagine a goony student sitting next to me in the 6th grade and scribbling this on a piece of notebook paper as an awesome idea he just had. You know, just take this famous picture, bulk up the dude and add a sexy lady with blades, crotch out. It's neither on the side of the fun of indulgence nor classy.

Welp, that's still where I stand. On the note of Ghost in the Shell, I find it a very vapid movie and series caked in gratuitousness which I will hardly ever understand the love for. Plus you could just watch Blade Runner instead and get more out of it. On the other hand I find Akira, with it's similar presentation ultraviolence, having characters that actually invoke emotion and motivation for their actions and the way the animation and visuals are presented.

Yep, I wasn't. I think it just echoes the Hitman stuff where you just take that idiotic still image of a dude with a huge gun pointing it directly at the head of a woman in ridiculous clothes, full on panty shot and teased hair, while she is looking away. Ignoring whatever the cliche motivation where she's an android or mass murderer (which isn't even apparent in the trailer), that's still their iconic imagery and I find it immature. But anyway everyone already said what I meant for me since that age old time I wrote that message.

Kitchen Quest This isn't exactly mine, but a kid's game I worked on a couple of years ago at my previous company just made an iPad port with some newer graphical flairs. I just got an iPad last night and boy did I feel proud. I didn't feel as proud when the flash version came out but it sure looks nice now for sure. I did the concept for main blue goat chef dude and a few other assets for menus and backgrounds and the chalkboard stuff, but I don't think I did any animation like the credits state. Maybe a minor amount, I forget. I had left earlier on in the project before a friend of mine took my job at the company and he's the one who finished up about 75% of the game's graphics. Anyway, I was more involved with other games at that company than this one, but none came to the iPad. I feel happy.

That guy's gonna totally shoot that woman in the head. Fucking awesome. Fuck this game. Are you really sure her boobs are bulletproof, toblix?

God that awful grin.

I was pretty annoyed with 360 not offering backwards compatibility. Of the generation before, I had owned an Xbox first off, but as I was finishing a lot of school, I didn't have time to finish most of my Xbox games. In the mean time the drive died and I threw it away. When 360 announced to eventually have all games compatible, I held out on purchasing another Xbox until I was sure 360 had all of the games ready. Just went ahead and bought another used Xbox when they made the announcement that the 360 would not support all games after all. And probably because of that I didn't even get around to buying the console until the beginning of this year, years after I purchased both my Wii and PS3. I don't know why console makers are so against including backwards compatibility when everything takes a damn DVD now. I was happy to get rid of my Gamecube to use a Wii only even though newer Wiis don't play Gamecube, I like that GBA played all previous game boy games, and that PS2 plays PS1 games. It would have been awesome for Sony to support PS2 for every iteration of the PS3, since it continues to support PS1 games in all models, but I guess that's not as tragic since I have to have a modded PS2 for some games and traded my fatter PS2 to a PS2 Slim, which is so tiny it's not obnoxious. Last year I regularly checked Ebay until I won a decently priced Sega CDX so I could have a nice compact awesome system instead of the ridiculously sized behemoth a Genesis+CD tends to be. Well worth it in my eyes. I just like saving space and not getting rid of physical copies I already own so that companies can sell me the downloadable versions. It sucks most video game players are not interested in revisiting old games or going through backlogs of stuff they may have missed a generation ago, but I guess that's the nature of retail since last gen games don't coexist with current gen and most gamers would rather just buy digital versions of things now. I understand the decision the companies are making since I am really such a minority in the backwards compatibility camp.

Half of it could be filled with tedious lizard hunting and fruit shooting within a barren world.

Wait are you saying you can charge your jump? If so how? Or are you saying you can charge your jump up from a hold, so like when I'm gripping R1 do I press and hold triangle to jump up higher? Also I think you guys are talking about how you are on the colossus and you raise your sword for a bit by holding square and then (I think) pressing square again. Does this do any different than tapping square a bunch? I couldn't perceive any difference but maybe it's just because of the first colossus. But on the lizards, no point turning back now. Yeah I am going for the max stamina trophy, but all it means is just one less playthrough if I get the lizards first time through without the indicator. I'm going to to get the rest of the collection junk when we do the second colossus, so the rest will be smooth sailing now that those are out of the way. My health bar is already 3 times or so of what I started with. Stamina didn't seem to change much.

Well I was just arguing with someone at work who loves this game and he sticks with the idea that the collectables coming off as subdued and unimportant is a feature as so not to break immersion. But unless we are talking about gleeful platformers, I think you can do collectables in great ways that feel good. The good thing about the Shadow collectables is looking at the guide I have about 60% of it for about 3 hours of work, that isn't really terrible, it was just boring. I think of all MGS games, almost any Zelda game, Brutal Legend, and Beyond Good and Evil as fun games with collectables. They also aren't incredibly hard to find. Brutal Legend is the only open world one and open world games tend to have the most unfun collectables, which SotC has. Zelda, Beyond Good and Evil and Metal Gear Solid games tend to beckon you with you areas you can see but can't reach, maybe peering through a vent or seeing a locked door where you are curious about what's inside. But I guess both of those games were not open world so exploration was more defined and therefore more streamlined. But I feel like the design behind the object placement is there and feels good and rewarding every time. I think with SotC if I were to fix the issue of collectables, I would have done 4-5 lizards each around the areas you open to fight the colossi and some on the save point temples (as these are easy to see on the horizon) and that would be the end of it. The fruit tress could have been the side hanging trees only with the same amount of fruit each and this all would have been fine, collision detection issues aside. I mean that's the thing, I feel like if the collectables are confined to an easter egg for all intents and purposes for more than 60% of players (my guess), why would the designers even bother putting them in?

In general I'd like many games to give you jack shit for playing hard (no trophies, no unlockables, nothing) other than the satisfaction of doing so, so that I don't have to. I would also like less grinding from games in general, which can be part of the difficulty in the way it's difficult to not be bored. I would probably hate playing any Dark Souls type game, so I'm never going to bother. Increasing any of this is useless I think. I don't have time for video game tedium any more in my life and anything that comes off smooth with a nice learning curve is good enough for me. Charging micro transactions to make a game easier is just more F2P bullshit that's ruining games now, so I wouldn't doubt that's not far off. Only thing I agree with you on is less tutorial garbage.

So I beat the first Colossus and I am using a guide to pick up all the idiotic collectables. I've done the whole lower half of the game lizards and fruit bullshit completely. Honestly, I'm not enjoying this game anywhere near what I thought I would. In many ways it just sucks. It feels like constant tedium so far. I forgave Ico's atrocious controls and physics because it was released 2001, but Shadow came out the end of 2005 and it's still carrying over the shit jump physics and crappy ineffectual sword swinging. They tried to add some Prince of Persia type wall climbing but it just tends to be broken or buggy half of the time. When I was trying to find some lizards, sometimes I would be required to scale rock faces that were not noticeably climbable. Turns out to climb shit you either hold jump right and about a foot below the edge you are going to be on, the character pops into place. So sloppy. Other times I could just spam the jump button and my character would jitter up a rock. Also getting fruit and lizards is an exercise in frustration every time, let alone the idiotic hassle it takes to find them in the first place. So many times my fruit that was shot down just goes 3/4ths into the ground, arrow side down, so I can't find the fucking things. So I'm just pressing R1 over and over again in a general area. Could they not fix their collision detection for these trees? The lizards themselves don't seem to care half the time if I slash them with my sword and if they are on a wall, I can hit them dead on but the sword just clangs and the lizard runs away. I'm sorry, Team Ico had 4 years development time and so many games in between came out smoother controls and more polish, but this game is so sloppy within an environment with almost nothing inside. It had Sony money backing it and it appears no time was put into a refined gameplay experience. Where did that time go? This is my main peeve so far because it's an exercise in tedium. I have a thing in my brain that makes me compulsively go for the collectables and it's been done well and intuitive with many games, but with Shadow it's almost as if the designers don't want you to gather any of this shit. There's no way to find all these lizards on your own without a guide. The world is filled with a bunch of nothing and you are supposed to find these tiny lizards with no indicators? Come on. On top of all of that, they don't stay still much and can be frustrating to kill. Some trees have fruit and some don't. The ones that do have multiples that you have to spend like 5 minutes running around holding your bow to see them all because this game has no FPV (another major mistake). I'm not wasting my time on bad design so I'm just using a guide and just slogging through this part. The colossus so far was fun enough but really not that awesome. I had to again look up what to do after the back leg part because I kept thinking the game wanted me to climb up the hammer since that goes down for an extended period of time, then I'd climb up to his elbow and stab a lot, doing nothing until I fell off because I ran out of stamina. To me, climbing up the back of his leg made less sense, because the parts where you shimmy on the ridges from the back of his thigh to his side made no sense as you had to shimmy with the bad controls to a different angle of ridge. Getting my character to do this seemed to be very buggy and there was a lot of jitter until I was on his side and I could get up to the lower platform on his back. Then shimmying again to the upper platforms was another exercise in frustration as I shimmied on the ledge to the left platform and somehow I shimmied under the platform and was holding on to nothing for a second before I just fell back down. I just tried again with the right upper platform and it went fine. Sheesh, is the whole game going to control this bad?

Yeah I meant she acted as his wife since I was trying to not spoil things, but I forgot he had a real family. I guess I was mistaken. But I figured part of what was getting Volgin off was taking advantage of Sokolov's current lover.

That and the ball grabber, Volgin who is actually bisexual, is a violent dude to both women and men in terms of his sexual desires and this is noted within context of the story. He's the second bisexual villian after Vamp, which again is another uncommon thing Hideo Kojima just inserts. Actually I think Volgin is a good example of what changed in MGS4 if I contrast him to Johnny. Johnny has traditionally been played up every game as doofy incompetent dude with diarrhea all the way up until Suddenly Act 5's briefing begins and there's two instances where he's trying to grab Mei Ling's butt even though the woman he's about to propose to is right next to him. Why's he suddenly slimy for this brief moment? I guess the MGS4 team thought it was hilarious, but it seems to either exist as a poorly executed joke scene with no sense of continuity within character or simply a poorly handled scenario with the end goal of having a bent over camera shot so we could check out the finely sculpted behind of next gen Mei Ling. If that latter had to be the case, I would feel much better had they just done a Mei Ling ass shot without a dude we are supposed to like reaching out for it. I mean to be fair here, I was treated to a few ridiculous ass shots of Snake throughout main cutscenes. Volgin is portrayed as an angry, power driven sadist in MGS3 who takes pleasure in sleeping with Sokolov's wife as well as shocking her at the same time. Multiple instances of Volgin acting out of control really doesn't show crotch grabbing as either sexist or out of character. None of this plays out with camera views right up Raikov/Snake's crotch or really comically for that matter. In fact upon rewatching it just now, it's a pretty fucking frightening scene which led up to one of the tensest cutscenes I've ever seen in a MGS game.

Haha I've seen that opinion around too, but I think the Raiden nude part was one of the most defining moments of the game. The VR Mission where you dash around nude again is even better. I guess that's part of the thing, in general Metal Gear games seem very balanced in terms of the characters on their stage, but I guess Metal Gear Solid 4 didn't do that for me. But on that point Thrik, as I said, I don't think Eva was a problem, as Thunderpeel said, she was very much within the theme of the game. The big problem with MGS4 is the Beauties are prominent parts of the game that are completely hollow and useless. They make no absolutely no driving impact within the storyline whatsoever nor do they expose any major plot points of the series as a whole. They aren't even characters as there's no personality you can even put your finger on. It's just women in wet skin tight shoots babbling about nothing in particular while the camera is pointed up their crotch. I don't know if just wrapping it up in the package of this being a Japanese game is easy enough. In my mind, no game in the series has been this gross and over the top as a main element of the game until MGS4.

Phew! Because I'm still looking forward to playing Peacewalker co-op with a good pal of mine

I don't remember that quote at all. Good point. Konami's localizers would have done that more recently and they could have just as well rewritten it if it were in the original Japanese dialogue like that. It's still not as over the top bothersome to me as much as Metal Gear Solid 4 is. Also Thunderpeel, is this to mean Peacewalker is a breath of fresh air? I know there's the whole 16 year old girl thing in her underwear at the beginning but how much worse does it get?