Cerrax

So Remember Me came out yesterday and I got my hands on it. You may recall that Capcom tried to force the developer, DONTNOD, to change the main character to a male when they found out it was a female. When that failed, they pushed to get scenes with the protagonist in a romantic relationship with a male removed. I admire DONTNOD for what they've done. The protagonist, Nillin, is a strong female character who isn't over-sexualized or made to be some female punching bag. She's smart, capable, and very aware of herself and others. In other words, she's a normal human being, not just another flat, one-dimensional imitation of a woman. I wonder what Anita (and any other feminists, or women in general for that matter) have to say about Nillin and the way she is portrayed in Remember Me.

So a little game called Remember Me came out yesterday and I wanted to share my thoughts and discuss it. You may recall the game stirred a bit of controversy because the publisher (Capcom) tried to get the main character to be a male rather than female and when that failed, they tried to remove scenes depicting the female protagonist in a romantic relationship with a male. I got my hands on it yesterday and I am enjoying it. The protagonist is strong, intelligent, and modest. She's not flashing skin every chance she gets nor is she subjected to ferociously violent or borderline sexual abuse. She's just an action hero, which is the whole point of the game. Her gender is not completely ignored (male figures will make comments about being attracted to her, male enemies will make remarks like "Are you afraid you're gonna break a nail?" during combat) but these instances only seem to drive the point that her gender does not define who she is. She constantly defies trademarks of typical female game characters, which I find refreshing as a gamer, and rewarding as someone who is tired of super sexy or weak and feeble females in games. The graphics are gorgeous and the music is equally beautiful. Yet both suffer from lack of variety. Navigating trash-laden streets, climbing dirty buildings, and then reaching the top to a glorious view of Neo Paris, all while an orchestral score swells melodies into the heavens, gets old after the fifth time. The music and graphics also periodically glitch which is intentional, but I'm hoping its more than just an aethstetic choice. When you enter people's memories, specific parts will glitch to indicate they can be altered. I'm hoping this works its way into the narrative more. Speaking of which, altering memories is actually pretty cool and I hope I get to do it more often. I've only had the opportunity to do it once and it was pretty neat. As I said, certain parts of the memory will glitch out, indicating that you can change that part of the memory. Chaining together the correct memory alterations will result in a new memory. The combat system is not as customizable as I thought it would be. The "Combo Lab" as the developer advertised, was a way to customize your combos. I thought this meant you could change the actual buttons of the combo to make new fighting moves, but that is not the case. Instead, you can alter the effects that each part of the combo has on you. You can assign different effects to each button press, which will boost or drain your abilities. For example, if you make a combo of Power, Regen, Regen, Power, completing the entire combo performs two Power moves and two health regenerations. It seems kind of dumb at first, but as you unlock new abilities and more combos, this systems actually gets pretty intricate.

It is fairly simple....If you can get the user to click on something that voluntarily opens their machine to install malware. This is usually achieved through ads, download links, and other deceptive methods to get users to click on it. Even then, it can be a crapshoot. Many browsers have options to alert you when a site is attempting to download or install software, and any anti-virus and anti-malware worth a damn can catch this too. Unless the program being deployed is decently clever, it's not going to make it through anti-malware, operating system security, and firewalls. But since XBox LIVE is a fairly closed system (closed in that only XBoxes can really interact with it, and even then, nothing is published without Microsoft's approval) heavily monitored by Microsoft, it's highly unlikely any such link would exist within the network unless Microsoft was the one who put it there. Somehow, I don't think that would be very good PR if somebody found out MS was loading their own devices with spyware.

All I know is that I probably won't watch any more of her videos. I want answers to these problems and for all her insight into where these problems exist, she offers zero insight into where the solutions might lie.

I understand her aim is to spur discussion of the topic, but the constant beating of the "violence and degradation of women" drum is getting old really quick. I already know the problems with females in games, I want to know some SOLUTIONS. As a male, I'm not entirely qualified or informed enough to make those decisions. But as a feminist and a female, she does. I want a female perspective on how to fix this problem. So far the only solutions I've heard that make any sense are from Jim Sterling.

Gauging the success of current-gen systems, it's not an unimaginable goal...just severely unlikely. I hope neither company is banking much on these projections. I'd be very excited if either console can hit 500 million but unless there is a massive change in consumer behavior and interest, no f-ing way this will happen.

It's got dance in the title! http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR01576/

I think the problem isn't the content per se. Many Trek captains have ignored the Prime Directive and other Starfleet regulations several times. The trouble is that nothing in the Abrams Trek movies has any substance to it. One of my favorite Star Trek moments is from the Season 4 opener of DS9, which is a huge battle between the Federation and the Klingons. But the reason that battle is so great isn't because of the special effects (it was 1995), but because Starfleet (as well as Commander Sisko) did not normally engage in this kind of behavior. But in the very beginning of the movie, we see the characters ignore not only direct orders from an officer, but also the Prime Directive, which sets the tone of the rest of the movie. Within the first 10 minutes, the audience is made to understand two things, Kirk and Co. don't play by the rules, and the rules don't matter because they're the good guys. As soon as Kirk loses the Enterprise by breaking regulation, he immediately gets it back with out any direct consequnce. He learns nothing from it, and the whole point of taking it in the first place is pointless. There are so many scenes like this in the Abrams Star Trek movies. Take for example (SPOILER): When the Dreadnaught class ship crashes into San Francisco. It was a big part of the trailer. Why? Because watching a sterling symbol of the franchise, as well as the best ship Starfleet has ever built crash into its own headquarters is incredibly powerful symbolic imagery. BUT, it wasn't the Enterprise that crashed into San Fran. So the scene loses all meaning. Now, instead of being a spectacular scene displaying the fall of the Federation's greatest endeavor, it's showing the Federation being destroyed by one Admiral and and a psycho with a vendetta. It undercuts the image of the Federation, which undercuts the main characters because they are part of that Federation. Not to mention the whole reason it comes crashing down in the first place is because of Kirk and Spock. Something that neither of them take responsibility for and would rather have Khan take the blame for. The whole scene just screams style over substance.

They didn't call it the PS One until 2000 because they didn't know there was going to be a PS2. The original PlayStation was abbreviated PSX. Not sure what the X was for. (It was the nineties. Everything was cooler with an X) Also, the PS One had totally remade hardware and a new operating system.

I'm with Brushfire. I really like consoles. I love having my big TV that I can can play mind-blowingly awesome games on. I buy a computer for utility. I do school work, personal tasks, and occasionally some gaming and fun (like listening to music or watching videos). But because my computer is so central to aspects of my life beyond gaming, it is not really built to handle that full time, and it quickly runs out of disk space (my 4 year old laptop has had several hundred GB of files moved to external drives, most of which have nothing to do with gaming). My console however (Xbox 360), despite being a multimedia machine, is my primary game machine. Yes I watch movies and TV (Netflix, Xfinity, and DVDs) on it. Yes I play music on it and talk with people over Xbox Live. Yes I get gaming news from it. But when I want to buy a game,. the first thing I do is check to see if it available for the 360. Because that is my main gaming device. I have a good computer. I have a nice iPod Touch. But my 360 is the one I game on, because it's easy to use, it's got a gigantic screen and speakers, and the games are widely available at just about any large retailer as well as Gamestop and other game stores.

That scene typifies J.J. Abrams' directing ability. He does things simply because it will catch someone's eye. Watch Into Darkness or the original Abrams Star Trek again. Any scene that is intense and visually appealing has little to no motivation from within the plot.

Fixed. The real United Nations held a two day conference with the writers of BSG to discuss how they came up with the various solutions and compromises of the plot because they mirrored the current national tensions and terrorist activities to a fault. Spoilers: - Uhura confronts Spock about his recent distance and lack of concern for his effect on others, specifically their relationship. This is never addressed for the rest of the movie. The closest we get is Spock saying "I'm sorry I got mad for you saving my life" at the end of the movie. - Kirk learns that taking responsibility for his crew and protecting them from danger is the pinnacle of a captain's duty. This seems like something Pike maybe should have cleared up before handing him THE BEST SHIP IN STARFLEET. I have never liked the new Kirk. He's arrogant and dumb, and (up until the final 15 minutes of Into Darkness) has little regard for his crew members. - The Admiral's whole scheme (which is basically the whole plot of the movie) is extremely convoluted at best. It's a string of fairly unlikely events that just happen to work. None of the deceptions or double crosses come off as a surprise. The Admiral backstabbed Kirk? Who cares? I just met the guy 30 minutes ago and he kinda seemed like a dick anyway. John Harrison is working against Starfleet and when Starfleet arrives, Kirk must use Harrison's advice to escape? Wow, yeah. Saw that one coming as soon as he surrendered to Starfleet. John Harrison is KHAN?! Yeah, again. If you know anything about Star Trek, you know that those Klingons would not go down that easily unless he was somehow enhanced. Combine that with Abrams' hack knowledge of the series, it obvious that the only well known Trek character that could pull all of this ridiculousness off is Khan. - Why is the warp core broken? Is there any way to fix it? In the TV series, most of the crew have at least a working knowledge of the ship (especially the captains), yet in this movie, the Enterprise gets ripped apart without Scotty running the engine room. The whole movie hinges on characters fitting into a rigid caste system. You're a bridge officer? You'll be screwed if you go into engineering, despite the fact that entire engineering crew has been working under Scotty and knows at least as much as Starfleet Academy has equipped them with to run a starship.

Unfortunately, yes it is. Right again. I'm not saying it's badly executed, its just all show, no substance. Dead wrong. I was hopeful. The first movie had some issues with pacing, but overall, I liked it. This movie just went at top speed all the time. It never took the time to fully flesh out any details or explain why characters do certain things. None of the characters grow or change or learn anything. A bunch of stuff gets blown up and that's about it. There's nothing to gain from this movie except spectacle. I expect Star Trek to have a certain credibility to it. Franchises like Star Wars and Doctor Who thrive on the fantastical aspects of sci-fi. They revel in large set pieces and epic battles for no reason other than "it will look freaking cool". Star Trek, by comparison has always shown a certain restraint. It's a franchise that realizes not everything has to be some epic struggle for life and death. Every conflict in Into Darkness is either a direct mortal peril to the crew or linked to a larger consequence that could destroy the world. There's no middle ground. There's no intelligent consideration of the events on screen. We are just expected to accept that everything Kirk and Co. do is a life or death struggle, and that just gets tiresome after two hours.

The biggest problem this movie has is that it has Star Trek in the title. As a fast-paced, slick-looking sci-fi action movie, it's not half bad. But as a Star Trek film, it fails miserably. And don't get me started on J.J. Abrams. That man will not be satisfied until every frame has 100 percent color saturation and lens flares coming from every light fixture. The whole movie just tries so damn hard to be flashy and interesting and fails actually present anything really compelling.

I think people bitching about "WHERE R TEH GAMEZ??!" forget that the games are made mostly by third parties. A console reveal is about what the console makers have made. The software made by a console manufacturer is mostly NOT GAMES. It is other software to showcase the full functionality of the system. If you are so worried about the games, then stop pinning it on Sony and Microsft and go find Ubisoft/Capcom/EA/whatever and ask the m about the games.

AppleTV already exists and it does slightly more than the Xbox and PS3 can do right now in terms of multimedia. PS4 and XBO could have no problem overcoming most of the new multimedia boxes flooding the market in the imminent death of traditional broadcast television.

As many people have stated, the "always on" or "check-in" or whatever the hell it is troubles me. When I spent 9 months in Greensburg, Pennsylvania for school, there was no Internet and almost no cell phone signal. If my Xbox would have shut down after 24 hours, I would have lost my goddamned mind in that little podunk. I spent numerous hours, not only by myself, but with many friends playing Xbox because THERE IS NOTHING ELSE TO DO. This is the problem with these types of systems. I've been a gamer all my life, and from what Microsoft is telling me, I don't fucking matter anymore if I end up in a place without Internet connectivity. That is fucking bullshit.

Did you actually pay attention to that game? Awful storytelling, a deplorable interpretation of one of the greatest pieces of literature in the Western world. And what innovation? As you yourself said, it's not a God of War clone because every action game ever could be called that. So how is Dante's Inferno any different? The only good thing about it was the visual interpretations of the circles of Hell. Almost all the good visuals I've seen of Dante's Hell are from centuries ago. It was cool to see a modern envisioning of them.

I actually use a synth from Logic/Garageband that produces filtered noise. I use a super low pitch and just set the release really long. Gives a nice organic sounding rumble underneath a track. I've used it in a few electronic songs (such as "Out of Antidote") as well as the soundtrack for a short horror film that I worked on.

Ok maybe not "grim", but Mega Man X is certainly aiming at an older audience.

This. Not to mention, Mega Man has NEVER been about shooting. It's a fast, twitchy platformer. Shooting is the easiest part of the game, just line up horizontally with the enemy and fire. The gameplay was about overcoming the obstacles in your path. Some required you to shoot them, some required you to be light on your feet, some required slow, thoughtful calculation. In the end, Mega Man has always been a glorified obstacle course. A first-person shooter would place the emphasis on aiming and shooting, which as I stated before, has never been part of the Mega Man formula. The Battle Network games were good, but again, there's nothing terribly "Mega Man" about them. Rama is right, these could have just as easily been re-skinned as Pokemon/Digimon/whatever. Same goes for Mega Man Legends/64. These are not Mega Man games, they are other games masquerading around in a Mega Man suit. Slapping "Mega Man" on an FPS, or an RPG, or anything else, would be akin to calling Madden "Ball of Duty" and re-skinning all the athletes as modern soldiers. Technically it looks like Call of Duty, but it has no relation to what the Call of Duty experience is actually about. BTW, I've trademarked "Ball of Duty". Activision, call me.

Brandon, I have already pre-ordered Remember Me, it looks fantastic. I'm not singling out Capcom, all game companies use pre-existing franchises to sell new gameplay models (Super Mario 2 anyone?). I would rather play the same game with a new IP rather than shoehorn a franchise that doesn't fit in there. And in case you missed it, ocre and myself both mentioned how similar this game looks to Vanquish, so if it resonates with you, definitely give that ORIGINAL IP the credit it deserves.

What's a damn shame is that game companies would rather slap a well-known franchise name on something simply to sell copies rather than venture into a new IP that could actually use the gameplay to its advantage.

Honestly, this looks a whole hell of a lot like Vanquish, an Action/FPS that does most of the things that are in those videos. Check that game out if you thought this was interesting. That game looks interesting, but I fail to see anything in it that makes it a Mega Man game. A cool idea? Sure, but it's not Mega Man in the slightest. Jumping in first person is really hard (Mirror's Edge and Quantum Conundrum taught us that), and the dashing and climbing is used like the homing in Sonic, meaning its nothing like how it works in 2-D. The use of enemy weapons is no different from every other FPS where you kill the bad guy and take his gun. The whole gritty realism just doesn't work for a series that is planted firmly in Astroboy-ish anime action.

Fixed. For every Bioshock Infinite, there are two hundred billion Too Humans. This statement can apply to any type of game with any size budget. Really? Tell me more. Not to mention that the "arty" styles most indie games use tend to age much more gracefully than AAA photo-realistic graphics.