EC2151

What did it 'say about us' back in the '80s when our movies and video-games often starred machine-gun toting musclemen who spouted one-liners at every given opportunity? Clearly we've lost something valuable to our collective conscious over the last 30 years.

The American version release of the PS1 game RayTracers had removed all the funny, poorly-voiced, stilted dialogue of the . It really sucks the fun and flavor out of the game to just hear... silence the entire time. Stuff like that really bugs the hell out of me. Let's not forget BioMetal on the SNES having its replaced with 2Unlimited music. Yes, you heard me.

This has a really cool vibe and style to it. I might tone down the bass a bit and bring out Sakura's lead a bit more, because the bass overpowers it a little, to my ears. I'm not great at picking out production issues, but for the most part it sounded really nice. I wish it was a bit longer! Maybe another go at Sakura's theme with a bit more background stuff going on? Ha ha, don't take my word for it. Good luck with the mix though. Hope some folk sit down to listen to it.

It was fairly clear though in my post which part of the post was the throwaway joke, and which part was the 'point' I was making. You just wasted time responding to the joke, and added some self-righteous reprimand in there for good measure. You don't need to waste your time, and you certainly don't need to waste my time. My mistake for jumping at the bit too quickly. It seems to be heavily implied in this topic that games should always cross both genders and appeal to both sensibilities. I was bringing up the point that that wasn't necessarily the case (nor should it be), though when games do in fact do just that, they tend to sell really, really well. I think it's kitschy at worse, and altogether harmless. I am not going to get up in arms if another Ghosts n' Goblins game features Prin Prin captured by Satan, and no one in this topic would be either. It's cute and silly.

And certain games drive away men. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that games appeal and are marketed specifically towards certain demographics. Boys and girls have different interests and inclinations, biologically and I would argue psychologically, and it would be foolhardy to deny that. A shootemup will never really appeal [large-scale] to women (and it never has if you look at sales charts), nor say, a submarine or flight sim. Again I point out that Pac-Man was designed specifically to appeal to women, and it was a hit (among both boys and girls). But not every game is Pac Man! @Ab56, I'll have to ask you to go out on a limb and make me give a shit. Unsurprising that in a topic like this it's hard to take an obvious joke.

I promised myself I'd stop getting roped into Other M hate-ins. But the temptation is so strong...

I know where you live, have a milk-crate full of dildos, and your body better be ready on Tuesday. Also, Ganondorf doesn't give two shits about Zelda aside from that insanely powerful artifact of the gods hiding in her wrist. This has been more or less the case from day one. I seriously wonder what girl gamers think about going into a nightclub in a video-game and beating up a bunch of crazed rave-fanatic junkie chicks. My thoughts, as a white Christian male, are "this is really cool!" but that might expose my deep-seated chauvinism. I felt the same playing God Hand. So many mohawks. So many mohawks. In God Hand, the spanking is a bit much, but everything is a bit much in God Hand. Quite possibly this is the first time I've ever heard this phrase uttered outside of 4chan, and possibly used seriously. My due, heteronormative male reaction. Also, does everyone forget that at least half, if not a majority of owners of the Wii were in fact female? And guess what the best-selling console of the generation was?

It's more a flavor thing, for me. Those dudes were so bad they'd even sock a gal in the gut. Thus, they all deserved the judicious beat-down they were to receive. I didn't play the game thinking "I need to rescue my girlfriend!" I played it thinking "this game is really silly." Maybe it was just me. I tend not to think too much about story or implications in games with blatant excuse-plots.

I would actually argue that the central element of Mario and Zelda are not rescuing their princesses - it's about exploring the Mushroom Kingdom and Hyrule - the fantastical journey if you will. This is explicitly clear in later Mario games as they have gone about as far as they can without explicitly saying their plots are just excuses to have fun in whatever scenario they can concoct. The 'backbone' of the games are about exploring the worlds contained within. The princess is just an excuse to get you out the door. In some cases it's lazy, yes, but I don't think it's something that was ever the central focus. I don't think anyone played Double Dragon precisely because of that gut-punch (but what would it be without it!), it was a set-up to go through the zany gang of thugs. @Derrit, if you all you are going to do is troll me, maybe a mod can get rid of your posts.

I find it hard to believe that someone who has been in this 'internet show' thing as long as she has would still have thin skin towards youtube comments. All the same, it closes her off from a major source of critique, which is crucial in these type of shows. If not, she's just another talking head that we're all supposed to say "Nice video!" to when she's done. What's the point? It's a waste of time. While at the same time, for advertisement purposes, I can see how she'd want to present an atmosphere free of those comments. I don't know if she has some forum for herself where there's a calmer venue for talking about this stuff, but I doubt it. Thus, we are again just left to hear her, end of story. I just think it's in some ways, bad form. @zircon: I think you read too much into the 'trope.' If the story is about a hero, then of course it is all about the hero! In a hero's story, that's the only thing that matters. It's gender neutral - video-games are at their heart escapist fantasy. It is truly all about you - everything in the game serves to challenge you and reinforce just how damn great you are, for overcoming these obstacles (even in highly disempowering games, like survival-horror games). I don't see how that is 'disrespectful.' Fairy tales aren't 'disrespectful' - we tell them because they appeal to our sensibilities (our love of heroism and in many cases ingenuity and selflessness) on a basic level. I explained why in the beginning it was usually women - it was easy, dramatic, and it worked - especially at appealing to young boys. And game stories back then didn't mean a damn thing (for the most part they still don't!). I believe you somewhat agree with this point, since your complaint is mainly why game companies still do it. I already said that it's not a normative framing device anymore. At the same time, 'damsels-in-distress' are not anywhere near as harmful or offensive as it seems she (and you?) think it is. Pac-Man was made to appeal to women. He's arguably the most recognizable game character ever.

Oh yeah, the fact that she disabled comments and ratings both made me lol, and more or less make pin her exactly as I figured - another whiny would-be e-celebrity.

I'd rather watch a video of bleck bitching about a game for 20 minutes, personally. It would likely be more informative and entertaining. I wouldn't pay for it, but I would give him, like, a thumbs up or something. This video was itself very boring in that it didn't bring in much of anything new that we didn't already know about games. It was a twenty-minute intro. Which is really lame. I'm surprised she spent so much time nitpicking the 'damsel in distress' stuff when it's at its heart, a kids' thing. It's not like fairy-tales told to kids about boys who (as one person put it) 'put it all on the line' to rescue yonder lady - it's not like there isn't any positive reinforcement or connotations that come with that. And while she only barely touched on it, it's not just 'damsels' - hell Blaster Master was about saving your pet frog. I think she made the model first and looked for examples, instead of the other way around. In that sense it is a sloppy video funded by hundreds of dollars parted from their fool owners. She also seems to fail to realize that for most of video-games' history it has been a male-oriented past-time. Like, duh, NES games are going to have male protagonists. A lot of early games were meant to appeal to boys, and in the same way you don't see Barbie doll manufacturers going out of their way to make Barbie more interesting for potential boy customers (they don't exist). As the industry grew and evolved, there were more female characters to control and 'play as' in video-games. Hell we have lots of great female protagonists at this stage. The whole 'damsel in distress' thing is hardly normative of video-game framing at this point. In general, this Sarkeesian lady (more or less) went fishing for things to nitpick, which I think is the general modus operandi for a lot of the 'sexism in video-games' arguments I hear today. I admit it's flattering that my posts are so good you can't help but think about me when I am nowhere, in no ways involved in a topic.

I watched the streams of the game from the moment it was leaked out of curiosity. I [initially] wasn't considering buying the game myself, because the developer interviews didn't make me confident that the game was really going to be what I wanted from a Tomb Raider game (my suspicions proved accurate: ergo, I won't buy the game). If you think Uncharted is good, you'd love the new Tomb Raider. I think Uncharted is boring, pandering shit, and thus, I'm not really 'sold.' Also, I didn't know that anyone gave a single shit about the origin of Lara Croft, the Tomb Raider. Samus Aran is my favorite game character, and her origin didn't really factor prominently in my estimation of her (it factored, but it was by far one of the least important things about her). We got an origin story for Samus too - no one cared. Other M, as always, is an extreme example of sheer incompetence, but I use it to illustrate that iconic game characters just need to be themselves to be loved and admired. Nothing more, nothing less. Why use a Tomb Raider license at all, if not just to cash in on fans of the franchise? If your idea of 'respect' includes [implicitly] "Make them weaker (because weak is 'interesting' and 'well-rounded')," what does that say about your own inclinations? I'm not seeing how having room for fun action-heroines that do exciting things (doing exciting things is the reason I play video-games - not so much for building emotional bonds with the characters) makes me a chauvinist or somehow lessens said heroines' appeal. Isn't there enough room for Ellen Ripley to be Ellen Ripley, Sarah Connor to be Sarah Connor, Lara Croft to be Lara Croft, and Samus Aran to be Samus Aran, alongside infinitely-deeper female characters in literature and movies? Or does everyone need to be Moll Flanders, Anna Karenina, or Madame Bovary? I may chalk all this up to being 'deliriously sick,' because your post does lack a great deal of coherence. I don't mind conversation, but if you want to insult me the whole time, how about I call you out on being a fucking assclown. Tangential to this post (but not tangential to this topic), there is a pretty (prequel to Fallout) on youtube. The guy sort of takes it as an opportunity to flex his DM story-telling skills, so it's pretty pleasant to listen to.

Here's the real, honest, TRUE reaction of anyone playing any survival-horror game: *take a few steps *quicksave *take a few more steps *look around *find item and pick it up *quicksave *see something moving *move out of the way *reload gun *quicksave *fight enemy from as far a distance as possible *quicksave *take a few steps Don't try and b.s. me. You know it's true.

The numerous, numerous fun ways to cause other peoples' deaths in Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 give the games an endlessly enjoyable atmosphere. =)

Is the 3DS Shinobi any good? And by 'any good,' I mean "Does it keep itself free of lame touch-screen or 3D camera or gyroscopic gimmicks which plagued the launch titles of the DS?" I just want a good 2D platformer...

All those people who shit themselves over Slender would positively die if they had to face the army of jump-scares in Resident Evil 3. That game takes place in jump-scare-city (I love it though). hey im snark im not so snark and im the 'guy that is too cool for school' Your point was "it's sad and ironic that O'Brien makes sexist jokes in a GURL POWER game" - and my point was "this game pales in comparison to earlier Tomb Raiders which had embraced both Lara-as-sexy-action-heroine and Lara-as-competent-video-game-'GURL POWER'-character." Is making an action heroine who is a pastiche of action-adventure movie characters weak and vulnerable (not to mention a rip off of a lame modern franchise) giving women their 'due respect'? Would that work the other way around if you say, made an origin story for Duke Nukem? I doubt it. Hell, the developer specifically said he wanted to make you (presumably the average male gamer, because who else reads developer interviews) care for Lara Croft of all people by making her WEAK AND VULNERABLE. Something like "You'll want to protect her!" I thought the point of Lara Croft was that she didn't need someone to protect her, but what do I know.

Maybe you just had to have been there for the 19 previous parts.

After that, the series more or less tried to "shock" you each time (with something even MORE cuh-razy or deplorable), so the effect eventually wore off.

If by "due respect" you mean turn Lara Croft into a Nathan Drake wannabe idiot, then yes, it certainly was respectful. I think most people only ever looked at pictures of PS1-era triangle-tits Lara and never played a single TR after that. Slender stops being scary once you realize that it's nothing but one big jump scare.

A lot of their recent videos are a bit overdone (just too many of them!) - the ones I linked above are fun for going along with the ride of that fun time in VG history with the first batch of CD-based games. Like the Earnest Evans retsupurae - that's golden.

About the only "Let's Play" material I watch is the retsupurae guys. The wrongupuraes of and are particularly noteworthy for being very, very funny. The original SomethingAwful Let's Plays the guys did of games like Metroid Fusion and Metroid Prime 2 Echoes are entertaining, though too long for me. And while these aren't precisely "Let's Plays", there's also , where some folk from a shmup community sort of commentate over a user-submitted playthrough of a shmup, usually talking about strategy this or that, which is fun and informative.

I judged the game on its own merits and gave it a 4/10. It's a step up from Adventures, which I had given a 1/10.

It's not that they "don't care," it's that BC would make the console more expensive, and you can bet your ass that Sony doesn't want another FIVE HUNDRED AND NINETY-NINE U.S. DOLLARS. Backwards compatibility did not really benefit the PS3 in any way. Why put in more dollars for laggy support?

Vortex is a "sister" game in that the people who made the SuperFX chip had a hand in developing StarFox, and they also developed on their own Vortex. So it's easy to draw parallels. It does have great music. And Krystal is without a doubt the worst thing to happen to the series. She came in, hijacked the plot, and literally fucked up the entire universe. No joke! What I would REALLY like to see is an official release of StarFox 2. It's a game I would like to play on a TV.