James

We mainly chatted and failed repeatedly at the co-op missions. It was a bonding experience. I expect we'll elope sometime soon.

Crap, now I'm three DLCs behind. One day I'll catch up, I promise.

Miloneux

Crap

It was only Wrestle and me in the end, but MAYBE IT WAS BETTER WITHOUT ALL YOU LAYABOUTS BRINGING US DOWN.

Regarding today's blast: I don't hate you Jake, regardless of how much you suck

It's been three weeks or something for me. It'll be good to be back.

I'm telling you, music with guitars in will destroy Western civilization.

Oh come on. The framerate might not be great, but "barely playable"? That's completely absurd. Pretty much the only time I noticed that the framerate wasn't usually so hot was when it suddenly picked up if I turned the camera so that all it could see was sky or water (like a less extreme version of what happened in Shadow of the Colossus). I'll admit that I'm a lot less concerned about constant 60 fps or whatever, and my eyes are probably shit, but in no way was it bad enough to influence gameplay. I had far more trouble with Cole getting stuck for several seconds trying to line himself up to heal or leech a downed person while getting shot at, or having that thing where on landing on a surface (particular surfaces seemed prone to this), instead of walking forwards he kind of hops diagonally backwards, or on a couple of occasions falling through the world.

It's the guitar music that makes them do it.

It certainly suggests something like that is up. No, I'm sure you're right about the Blu-ray. Still, you can boot to the XMB without it even being plugged in. Do you get the startup sound when it's plugged into the Dell? If you boot it plugged into the Dell, then remove it and plug it into another monitor/TV, does it reboot? I doubt it, as, like I said, I haven't encountered any of that crap with my PS3, but it's worth a try. Could it be something to do with specific HDMI versions? I really don't know too much about this stuff. It does sound like some sort of HDCP thing, but like I said, I don't think any of the non-Blu-ray stuff is protected. Perhaps there's some sort of background HDCP process. Hopefully there's an expert out there to illustrate how ignorant I am on the subject.

I wasn't expecting it to be patched in, and I'm not speaking from any practical standpoint; I just find it a bit irksome that the same four zombies seem to be constantly getting resurrected to harass the survivors. I just want some visual variety for its own sake.

Actually, this might be a case where the material would be more distressing for an adult than a child, depending on how much they've been exposed to certain images and ideas. I'm not sure how prominent ideas of nuclear Armageddon are in the contemporary child's psyche. It wasn't until comparatively recently that I came to appreciate quite how horrendously destructive such a thing would be in human terms. I think to kids perhaps it will just be some snazzy visual effects. Then again, nightmares about bombs and missiles with apocalyptic properties (some supernaturally so) are the only long-term recurring dream I can remember having (I don't dream about them with much frequency at all, but I have done so on a number of occasions spread over many years). They seriously upset me in a way I couldn't fully account for once I woke up. I guess that's how nightmares go. Anyway, perhaps I'm completely misjudging. I don't know. I think I'd find that stuff more profound now than as a child, though. The nuclear stuff, that is. It's a case where context actually makes it more potent and frightening.

I believe they originally had a more traditional zombie mechanic whereby on dying players would come back as zombies, but found that it fostered distrust and undermined the teamwork aspect they were trying to emphasize so much. I don't know. Once you're a man down, you're already pretty buggered, so adding a human-controlled adversary into the mix would probably just make failure even more of a certainty. Then again, it would be pretty great to see zombified versions of your former buddies. I'd quite like it if they had multiple models for each special. They'd have to maintain the distinctive profiles, of course, but vary up the specifics a bit.

Technically, I'm agnostic regarding the existence of any gods, in as much as I don't think the truth is entirely knowable. Philosophically, I'm agnostic about pretty much everything, because I don't believe any empirical observations are entirely reliable, so the doubt I have concerning the non-existence of god should be framed in the context of the doubt I have that I'm sitting on a chair as I write this. I describe myself as an atheist, as my doubt is comparatively small, and because not only do I not believe there is a god; I specifically believe that there isn't one. A pedantic differentiation, perhaps, but one I insist on going on about. But I'm pretty much entirely in agreement with Nachimir. Also, before you mentioned Ben Goldacre I was genuinely planning on linking to this. Which always makes me think of this, which isn't so much to do with religion, but is a little bit to do with science by way of its misrepresentation in advertising, particularly in terms of statistics.

Are you sure you don't want to introduce a "cr" into the mix?

Not a PC my arse. HDMI is a standard so anything using that standard should work fine. The PS3 doesn't even use any HDCP stuff like the 360 does (which makes it restart every time I swap the cable out for another device, annoyingly).

Oh, those irritate me a little as well, not least because, if anything, it should be "dohta". I guess I just find "yoo-arr-ell" is awkward and lacking in consonants. The alternative isn't much better, but at least it's shorter so I can get it out of the way sooner. Generally I just say "address" and sidestep the whole tiresome affair.

I've wondered the same thing. Perhaps we assume that people (or specifically children) have ineffective imaginations. Or perhaps it's a residual sense that moving images are somehow magical. I don't know if this is apocryphal, and I'm too lazy to check, but I heard that when trains were first introduced, high solid fences were constructed by the tracks because it was feared that the very sight of a thing moving so fast would drive a person mad. And it now seems quaint that at one point words seemed so mysterious and powerful that the right ones could directly control reality. Perhaps this is the same sort of thinking. Perhaps it's daft to imagine that mere exposure to these things will permanently distress or even corrupt a child. Perhaps that's not even the majority concern. Perhaps it's just like avoiding injuries: the child will get better, but it's not a positive experience. I guess there is some sort of basis for this censorship in general societal behaviour. Most of us would not expose a child to the sight of people having sex, and would be even more vehement about it if it were in person.* It's a bit trickier with violence because obvious violence does not really have any comfortable place in polite society, although there are more subtle and insidious forms. Still, if we imagine ourselves in a violent situation with a child, I think most of us would attempt to protect the child from the sight as well as actual physical harm, and I don't think it's accepted that it's possible to become mentally scarred by these things. Of course, we are able to distinguish between fiction and reality, but at what point and at what pace does this ability develop? It almost certainly varies from case to case, probably by large degrees. I would subscribe to the "give ratings as guidelines and let parents judge according to their kids' development" stance. Another point is that even if a child can distinguish between fiction and reality for each specific instance, repeated exposure to extreme material could influence their conception of certain norms (a similar concern is sometimes raised with regard to pornography). Of course, this could influence adults, too, although I imagine children would be more vulnerable to it. As Nachimir points out, it's hard if not impossible to get any concrete, balanced and objective data on this subject, so it ends up being based on a collection of intuitions and vague signals and correlations. _________ Thunderpeel raises an interesting point regarding the importance of story and context on the impact imagery has. It is indeed significant that there is some story of horribleness behind the people dying on the screen. Still, I think Doom was pretty extreme in its own ways -- if a modern game depicted a guy impaled on a spike, face up, limbs dangling, and occasionally twitching, it would probably be kind of horrific. At the time it was something that was delightfully morbid ("SO COOL!"). I wonder whether that's to do with context or just the fact that the poor fellow was pixelated enough to be safely seated (or impaled) on the far side of the uncanny valley. _________ * I'm sure there are societies for which this isn't the case. Whether this means our society is needlessly prudish, or simply that we're preparing children for the norms of the society they're gradually becoming a part of, is a different discussion.

From the sound of it, they're intending to further subvert previously successful strategies and generally keep us on our toes.

Yeah, sorry, I worked that out by a process of elimination shortly after posting. Crouch until the little circle around your crosshair fills up, then you are ready to pounce. If you stand up it will reset the the circle, but if you stay crouched between pounces you can keep going indefinitely without having to wait for it to charge again. Beyond that it's just technique, I think. Judging the arcs and all that. Yeah, it can be a bit fiddly, I guess. If you're about to lose control it might be an idea to throw something at somebody, although that does take a second or two. I like how tanks basically make you reverse all your strategies. Normally everyone wants to stick together and have as many sides as possible covered by walls, but the tank can take you down in seconds if he just keeps bouncing you off a wall, and it's probably best to spread out so you don't all get fucked at once.

It was good indeed. It had plenty of the back-and-forth defeat-and-comeback stuff that makes things exciting, and some really great moments of Infected viciousness and co-ordination on both teams. I was particularly pleased with the final round, in which I first spawned as a Smoker, and one of my team-mates as a tank. We were playing No Mercy, and we were in the long corridor after the staircase at the start. I waited for the Tank to pass, and as it did, grabbed the nearest survivor (Wrestlevania), pulling him away from his team, who were pre-occupied with the tank. I think someone else from my team got Boomer bile over most of the rest of the team, so I was left to my own devices with poor Wrestle. Eventually ysbreker pounced on him as a hunter to finish him off, so it was a real team effort.

I often find that if a thing was not new when I first experienced it, it seems timelessly old, because its point of origin is in the indeterminate past as far as my memories go.

Crap, I just posted a whole load of drivel in the Life thread. Should I migrate it? It probably shouldn't be anywhere.

Not my experience I have to say that your experience sounds skewed to me. Perhaps you don't consider the moderate people to be properly religious or something, but in a whole lot of demographics religious people are the majority, and the majority are certainly not harmful fuckheads. All sorts of people in my life are religious, and barely any of them are harmful fuckheads. Which is pretty great, I guess. But if powers do know that they risk nothing from the population, what will they care if you're marching or not. Consciously or not governments are afraid of a revolution and (rightfully) not of people saying what they think. But I thought the march was against Nazis, not the government. Unless they were marching to convince the government to take some sort of action against the Nazis, I'm not sure what the government has to do with it in the first place. I thought it was more a matter of representing the public opposition of the Nazi demonstrators, and thereby presenting an alternative (and hopefully more reasonable) perspective to those who are watching. In short, I thought the public were the target, and that this was a publicity affair. Perhaps I'm wrong. I'm really not sure people are going to be particularly effective at convincing a Western* government that revolution is on the cards without getting pretty intense with their protesting, and at that stage they'll be pursued as terrorists. Since when did smashing things up win the government over to your way of thinking? Did kicking a few bank windows in convince anybody to give up capitalism or whatever it was those guys were trying to say? I would pretty much draw the line at self-defence, and say that anyviolence that can't in some way be framed as self-defence is not legitimate. Of course, when you try to account for indirect self-defence or pin down who exactly crossed the line and became "the aggressor", it all becomes very hazy and complicated, but I think I can stand by the principle. If you are not in some sort of real and potentially grave danger, do not resort to violence. At least, that's what I think I think... Castorp, if I haven't already acknowledged this sufficiently, I would like to make clear that I realize that I don't know the specifics of the situation, and as such cannot fully condemn what happened, but I would maintain that acts of violence and destruction almost always introduce a negative and undesirable element to a situation. This is exactly the kind of language used by racists trying to drive minorities out of town. Of course, I don't want to equate those who hold Nazi beliefs (something upon which they have an influence) with the targets of racism (who have no influence on the reason for persecution), but it's certainly a very dangerous road to walk down. If bricking a Nazi's shop can be said to be an effective way of driving him and his associates out of town, can bricking a non-white person's shop or home also be described as such? Clearly I don't think the complaints are equal in their legitimacy, but I don't think we should imagine we're above the law, nor that holding a belief is a crime. Acting on it may be, of course. It may be patronizing, but the way I see it, since I believe that no religion is actually right, it doesn't matter how historically accurate somebody's religious belief is, as none of it's actually true, anyway. If people want to ignore the bits of their religion that they find unpalatable, fine; if I find them unpalatable too, great! They're not subscribing to something I dislike. It may not be consistent with the supposedly "authentic" version of their religion, but what's authenticity when it's all fiction? Then again, people do on occasion (disappointingly frequently) hand-pick a selection of the worst parts. Still, I don't think religion causes them to think any odious things they didn't already have the capacity to think. I must also confess to being quite irritated by the New Age habit of picking and choosing one's favourite parts from a bunch of religions and spiritual belief systems. I realize that that's exactly the sort of thing I was talking about a couple of paragraphs ago, but it seems so fashionable and self-centred that it really grates me. I won't judge it on a moral level, but I will look down on it in terms of taste. I guess my point is really that the implication that people haven't read up on what they believe suggests that they're capable of believing something without knowing what it is. What they believe is dependent on their conception of their religion, and I don't think that's especially particular to religion. It would good for people to do research in as much as it would expand their knowledge, but who's to say whether the mutation of a religion through the ages diminishes it from the truth, or refines it towards it? Well obviously I think it's neither. I don't know, perhaps I'm being too defensive for laziness and ignorance (not least because I'm lazy and ignorant myself), but it kind of bothers me when people act as though to believe something one has to study it academically. I believe all sorts of things I haven't really learnt about in any formal setting or researched thoroughly. Perhaps, but why does that bother you? It's not like anyone's killing science with it or anything. I guess in some places religious people are influencing schooling in some pretty nutty ways, which is bad, but it's the act that's bad, not the belief behind it. I think religion is mainly a response to uncertainty and the unknowable. People are unsettled by the prospect of things being out of their hands, and beyond even their powers of prediction or comprehension, so they invent ideas that bring order to the orderless. This might not be particularly intellectually rigorous, but I think it's an entirely understandable and sympathetic response to a world that is indifferent and at times chaotic. Perhaps I'm being soft. I don't see what's particularly logical or noble or advantageous about worrying about other people's beliefs are, though. For the record, I used to be somewhat militant in my atheism, but I came to find that stance arrogant and obnoxious. Who gives a shit that I think I've got all the answers? Me too, I've been at public protest for the separation of church and state to make cults pay taxes. I wouldn't say that that makes you a militant atheist. Both of those things are compatible with respect for those who hold religious beliefs. Also, I would hesitate before conflating religions and cults, even if they do share many characteristics. I should probably proof-read this mess, but it's late and I have work in the morning. _______________ * I'm not sure how the situation differs in less stable countries __________________________________________________ EDIT: A) Sorry for that wall of tripe being a wall of tripe. Sorry for bringing up stuff that people were probably already bored of before they finished talking about it. C) Sorry for that even though I'm not your fiance. Seriously, the best of wishes to you. I guess it's better this happen now than later, but I doubt that makes it feel any better. My condolences.