Now there’s strange headline for you. Venezuela… land of tropical beauty, drug lords, corrupt governements, rebellions, murder, more guns than Mexico City and one of the more violent places to try and take a liesurely stroll down the street on any given day. And how did this paradise become such a haven for crime and death? The answer is obvious: Video Games.
Yes, the long-running president of Venezuela – Hugo Chavez – is pushing through legislation to fully ban violent video games in his beloved country. This makes sense of course. I mean it has to be the fault of violent video games that put poor Venezuela into it’s current situation. Just because drug cartels have been murdering each other and civilians since long before Pong was created is no reason to look at this rationally.
In addition, this new legislation would ban toy weapons. Which is a smart economic move when you think about it. I mean, why let your people buy cheap toy guns from China when you are building the largest machine gun factory* in all of South America in your country? Keep that money in country and sell those kids real weapons instead. Besides, that will keep them safer on their way home from school than that old toy would have anyway. ( * This is an older link but this still seems to be on-going. I just can’t find any articles online.)
In related news, the Vatican is also calling for an end to all violent video games. According to the Pope, the Crusades were not the result of theocratic greed and corruption but by early video games. It seems that demos of Grand Theft Carriage caused quite a stir with peasants and drove the knights to slaughter. A lesser known but more revolting game called Messenger featured a messenger who had one too many bad days at the Messenger Office and started shooting all his co-workers with a cleverly hidden crossbow. It is said that this game was an allegory to the Muslims and how mean they were for not giving back land to the church that was never the church’s in the first place. The rest, as they say, is history.
Telepathic requests for comment to the Pope were not returned by the time I posted this entry.
Bachelor life is starting to get to me I think. I’ve played so much Beautiful Katamari that I think my hands have permanantly contorted into grasping claws. Which is actually rather convenient for playing XBox games to be honest. Makes typing hard though.
Add to that bizarre Japanese game the fact that I have been watching nothing but Japanese language movies and TV (with English subtitles of course) and I’m relatively sure I can here The Vapors invading my internal soundtrack. And that’s never a good thing.
As you can see from my Most Recently list over on the right, it’s been kind of crazy. I’m also watching Kagemusha but I didn’t get to finish it last night due to various phone calls and laundry, but that’s another that will be added to the list. I actually haven’t completely finished watching Haibane Renmei yet either so please do not post anything about that or any spoilers (that pretty much means Insomnic). I would hate to have to kill you in your sleep.
I’m currently downloading Neon Genesis Evangelion so I can continue this craziness. I can’t get an English version here in Hong Kong, so… well… piracy to the rescue! Don’t worry MPAA, it’s still on my Amazon Wishlist.
Perhaps I’ll get some sushi for lunch today. Hmm….
I’ve spent the past three hours playing Condemned: Criminal Origins on my XBox360. I played it for a few hours just a few days ago too. I knew what I was getting myself into. Except it was daylight when I played that day. Tonight I started at 11:00pm. After the first half-hour I reluctantly turned off the overhead light because the game is so dark, the light in my room just makes it harder to see. Most of the game is spent walking through corridors and checking every corner for crazed madmen… in the dark… with only a small flashlight and a single weapon.
Now, three hours later, it’s 2:15am and I want to go to sleep. My blood pressure and adrenaline are up. I heard all sorts of creaks and other odd noises as I went to use the toilet and then brush my teeth. I kept watching the bathroom door reflected in the mirror for any movement or shift of shadows beyond the crack of an opening. More noises… more blood pressure. I had remembered to lock and bolt the door to the flat before I started playing. I knew I would be paranoid after playing.
I found myself looking around the bathroom as I brushed my teeth. Looking for makeshift weapons like you do in the game. I decided that the shower curtain rod was my only real option. I could get that down in a hurry if I needed to. I touched it… it seems sturdy.
This flat makes a lot of strange noises now that I’m alone here. My imagination loves that. I hope it’s just my imagination. I’m going to go run to the bed and hide under the covers now. I’m just glad that the wardrobes are gone so nothing can hide in them while I fall asleep. And the bed has storage underneath instead of being open space. Something might otherwise grab my ankle as I get in bed.
Maybe I’ll just sleep right here… in front of the computer. Safer that way. I hope….
Oh, Jack Thompson, you poor deluded old idiot. I know Jack’s disbarment hearing is old news at this point but a lot of my readers don’t follow this kind of news on a regular basis.
Jack Thompson with his favorite video game
Jack Thompson is the florida lawyer who deems himself as a “moral crusader” who has slapped lawsuits against everyone and every thing over the past two decades (at least). He’s the one who got Howard Stern banned from something or other (no big loss there) and the one who flocks to every school shooting and teenage violence case to feed on the carcasses of the families left behind. He’s the worst kind of ambulance chaser because he doesn’t just try and make money off of other people’s tragedies, he parades these people in front of the world as a symbol of his insane fight to try and censor everything that ‘he’ deems improper.
Finally, the public and the government are catching on to this guy and doing something about him and is working to get him disbarred in the state of Florida. He walked out of that hearing. He refused to acknowledge the judge as a judge and accused her of falsifying her credentials among other things. He wrote a 14 page essay against his hearing where he actually stated “You don’t know Jack.” This guy has been a lost cause for a long time but I think he’s completely and clinically cracked at this point.
He’s also made it very clear that he has already applied for the ability to practice law in other states since Florida is obviously just out to get him. I’m hoping that no other states approve him but I’m not sure I have that much faith in the government. It’s hard to say at this point.
According to an interview with Tomonobu Itagaki over at CVG, it’s the end of the line for both the Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive series of games. Itagaki is the famous creator of both those hugely popular video game franchises. He states in the interview via a translator from his native Japanese that he and his closest colleagues have accomplished everything they have wanted with those games.
Ninja Gaiden II will be available as an XBox360 exclusive on June 3rd, 2008 and is currently available for pre-orders. For nostalgia sake you can also purchase the original Ninja Gaiden through XBox Live as a downloadable game for 1200 Microsoft Points. I doubt there’s a need to do so story-wise though.
The final game in the Dead or Alive series is the disappointing Dead or Alive 4 which launched with the XBox360. My Hong Kong XBox360 came as a package deal with DoA4 and I’ve been regretting that one ever since. I’d always been a huge fan of the series but the changes to counter-attacks in the game really ruined it for me. I refuse to link to the Dead or Alive Volleyball spin-off games.
Not that it was longer than the standard two days, but this did end up being a nice long weekend. I would tell you all about it, but my wife has already gone through all the trouble of writing it all out, so I will just ask that you go read the details at her site.
On Friday night I spent a little time finishing up the last chapter of American Gods by Neil Gaiman so I could start on a new book on Monday’s commute. I’d heard from a lot of people that American Gods was a good book and it definitely did not dissapoint. I’ve been a big fan of Neil Gaiman since the Sandman comics series first came what seems like forever ago. If you are a fan of his and have not read American Gods, I highly recommend it. I really can’t say much about it because I don’t want to ruin any of the details for anyone. I’ll be checking the used book store for Anansi Boys since it has a few of the same characters although I understand it’s not actually a sequel.
On Saturday, Muse had a nice long nap so I finished playing Bioshock on the XBox360. Considering all the hype and glowing reviews surrounding this game I have to admit that I had pretty high expectations for this game. Especially since the creators were some of the same people that created the classic System Shock and System Shock 2 games many years prior. For a lot of the game I felt kind of disappointed and even a bit bored with the repitition. However the mechanics are decent and the story is somewhat interesting so I kept playing and I’m glad I did.
I’m guessing that the reviewers that gave it the good ratings that they did had completed the game because it just doesn’t work until you’ve finished the game and seen the whole picture and the whole story (or at least as much is available in this game). Some parts of the game are tedious or annoying ( I lost count of how many Little Sisters died on my watch in The Proving Grounds) but the overall look and feel of the game is perfect. It’s not a flawless game though and I encoutered the typical errors that are found in most games in regards to graphics, AI and physics. It’s a good game and well worth playing all the way through but I don’t think it was deserving of all the hype that it received.
It has been mentioned that perhaps I need to take a break from playing video games because I seem to be getting jaded in my opinions of new titles. Which I think is untrue as well as impossible. Untrue because there have been a number of games that I have played recently that I have absolutely loved (or at least really liked). Impossible because video games are a huge part of my life and I can’t imagine life without them. That may change but not today.
Although I would really prefer a Warhammer 40K MMORPG be created for my entertainment, I’m not above being interested in the alternate universe of Warhammer Fantasy. It’s not as interesting to me but at least it’s something. The online game version, which has been in development for a very long time now, has been shaping up to be a pretty involved game. I’m still not sure how they will stick to some of the core conventions of the Warhammer table top games but maybe they won’t need to.
Some say that this is looking a lot like World of Warcraft but that is really unfair and untrue since Warhammer has been out for at least 20 years longer than Warcraft. Warcraft owes a hell of a lot to the Warhammer games in it’s races and designs. However now it looks like Warhammer is taking at least one queue from Blizzard. They are releasing a very cool looking collector’s edition of the game that is now available for pre-orders. Considering I bought a collectors edition box set for both releases of World of Warcraft so far, I am definitely their target audience here.
Yes this version will cost a lot more and no it’s not really worth it in the long run but dammit if I am going to buy this game I don’t want it unless I can have the collector’s edition. I am a sucker for cool marketing and this just looks awesome. Add to that the requisite exclusive in-game content and I’m sold. Yeah I know. It’s a sickness….
If you’re not familiar with the whole Gamespot fiasco late last year (where a premier editor was fired after giving a bad review to a heavily advertised game), this Ars Technica article shows a timeline of his firing followed by the departure of five more major Gamespot staff, many of which claim say has to do with the original firing. Gamespot can claim that the firing was unrelated to the advertising and the review, but somehow I doubt it.
While I was poking around in the user comments though, I noticed a link to a site called Giant Bomb. This is a new start-up games site by Jeff Gerstmann (the Gamespot editor who was fired) and other recently ex-Gamespot staff including Ryan Davis and Alex Navarro. I’d say it’s pretty likely that even more recent Gamespot retirees will start having their name show up on this site as well.
The Giant Bomb site has only been posting content since February but they already have some game reviews and news of the quality that I used to come to expect from the old site. If you’re interested in games and gaming news, make sure you bookmark this site as I expect it to become a major player very soon.
I’m back from Kuala Lumpur but I had to take a sick day today. It seems I ate or drank something that has turned my intestines into a juice factory. I had water at one or two restaurants and by the time I was supposed to be leaving for the airport, I was still worrying about where the next bathroom would be on the way out. I wasn’t late for my flight, but I was a little worried about half way to the airport that I might have to ask the taxi driver to stop at the next brightly colored mosque so I could pay tribute, so to speak.
Before dinner, I started playing Overlord on the XBox 360. I hadn’t intended to get it but the Broadway electronics store had a bunch of 360 games on sale for only $159 HKD (about $20 USD) which is dirt cheap. I haven’t gotten very far in it yet, but I think I’ll like it. I’m not sure it’s going to be as good as the classic Dungeon Keeper and Dungeon Keeper 2, but for current games that allow you to play as the bad guy, this is about all the choice you get.
Original tip off from Insomnic.
Here’s another article about it from the BBC. Considering the age of the actors that they’ve signed on for the likenesses and voices of the new Ghostbusters video game, it’s probably a good idea to continue the storyline after Ghostbusters 2 in a video game where age is irrelevant. Plus this a good way for Ernie Hudson to not play a traditional police officer as he ALWAYS does. Poor guy. He’s probably the most typecast person in Hollywood. Although technically I guess you could consider the Ghostbusters an elite ghost police force. Ah well….
It seems odd to resurrect this movie franchise after so long, but it least it makes sense unlike the recent game of Scarface where they had to change the story to even make the game possible. Although a zombie Tony Montana would have probably made for a more appealing game to me.
Funny, Games, Politics, Religion | cybrpunk | 
August 31, 2009 8:45 am | 
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