The emulators themselves are not illegal. The legal grey area comes entirely from the ROMs and ISOs. That said, yeah, emulation is technically illegal if you don't have a legal copy. That said, this is going to be the only realistic way to play games like Suikoden II if you're not willing to pay $200 for it because Konami refuses to PUT THE ****ING GAME ON PSN OR XBL DESPITE THE FACT THAT ITS A TWO HUNDRED ****ING DOLLAR GAME! GAH! ANGRISH! Sorry. Lost my sanity slightly there. Also, Visual Boy Advance is the best GBA emulator and ePSXe is the best PS1 emulator... even if you need to find the PS1s BIOS files... which are illegal to distribute.
This series is trash. It is generic harem comedy with all the usual sexism and immaturity and nothing more. I tried it since it was drawn by Kentaro Yabuki, who needs to stop drawing awful harem and go back to doing things that don't suck. The characters are derivative, the plot is derivative and relies almost entirely on fanservice to keep people interested. Really, the only thing I can say is positive about this trash is that the art is well done, but I wouldn't call it "good" due to the constant fanservice. Even if I did call it good, good art can never make up for bad writing and storytelling.
Well, it beats Megaman Xover. Neat, but still not what Megaman deserves and still not enough proof that Capcom cares about it anymore.
It's probably for simplicity's sake. It's easier to spread the policy over the entirety of the PAL regions than limit it to just Germany. That said, German censorship laws really need to ease the **** up.
https://www.humblebundle.com Well, this is certainly interesting. For once, its the first non-indie Humble Bundle. For two, its clear that THQ is saying "Hey, try these games for cheap, so you'll buy some of our other games!" I'm just curious why Red Faction Armageddon is on there instead of, say, Space Marine or even Red Faction: Guerrilla.
The only developer that I really hope gets saved is Relic. Though, I think I'd rather Ubisoft pick up some of THQ's licenses. Somehow I don't feel like Square would give too big a **** about Warhammer 40,000.
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Saint's Row series, Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, Darksiders series, Metro 2033 and, if you count PC games, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War series.
I'm mostly terrified of what will happen to the Warhammer 40,000 license if THQ goes under. They've been treating it very well and I don't know how much anyone else will care about it.
What's an even bigger problem is that there is a significant part of society that thinks if a woman is raped, it was somehow also her fault for where she was at the time, what she was wearing or how she was acting. The problem with this should be completely obvious. Rape is a horrible thing and anyone who does it is a horrible person (pen this down as a massive understatement, please). If a woman wants to wear extremely revealing clothing, that's her problem and she shouldn't have to fear being attacked for it, let alone BLAMED for a potential attack.
In other news, the sky is blue.
Good business or not, the point still stands. Again, like I said, I am a fan of the Warriors franchise and am also a fan of Pokemon and many of Nintendo's franchises (though, for the most part, Nintendo is formula, not rehash). A rehashed game is not necessarily a bad game. It just means that little has changed and, usually the game is released once a year. Again, while reviews are ultimately opinions, they are professional, journalistic and educated opinions. They aren't only based on how much the reviewer enjoyed the game, but on how well the game was built, how new and original the content is, how much value the reviewer feels that players will get out of the game, among other things. The problem with a game like Call of Duty is that, every year, it is the same multiplayer game with a short single player that, in today's age, could have been a $20 expansion pack to Modern Warfare. World at War was Modern Warfare in WWII, Black Ops was Modern Warfare in the Cold War and Black Ops II, if history is anything to go by, will likely be Modern Warfare in the near future. They have consistently featured very brief, 3-5 hour campaigns and the same basic multi-player with a few new maps and weapons. This does not necessarily make them bad games, however. AAA titles? No. They really offer no more content than what could have been an expansion to the first Modern Warfare, which, I think is inexcusable if they're going to charge $60 for them, but it doesn't make them bad. They are well built games and even their most vocal critics admit that they do have their moments. However, they also have serious issues. The multiplayer requires no real strategy and is just point and click and try to get as many kills as possible before you go down yourself, the single player campaigns have unimaginative, unrealistic and cliched stories that wouldn't be out of place in a Michael Bay film and are, again, too damn short to be worth $60. As for Madden, if they actually changed it to make it effective a new experience, great! But if it still plays the same way and feels the same way, new physics or not, it is not a new experience. Again, it doesn't necessarily make it a bad game, just not a truly great game. Well, Blistered Thumbs is probably the most ethical gaming site on the net right now and their mission statement flat out states that they trying to serve the readers, which is exactly how journalism should be (side note, BT is the only site I know of that game Modern Warfare 3 below an 8/10 by giving it a 5/10 (average) based on what I said above and more). Kotaku abandoned any sort of scoring system to avoid the usual problems with scoring systems. Believe it or not, but many developers actually use reviews to find constructive criticism, even their game is acclaimed. Based on what I've seen from Gamespot and IGN, they've stopped serving the readers. This is very frustrating to me as I see the importance of journalistic ethics. It is inexcusable to let ANY advertisers make any decisions in a publication. If they pull funding, then you do what you can to find new funding and soldier on. Gamespot and IGN are more than big enough that they don't need to resort to compromising their ethics to keep advertisers. If they refuse to send review copies, you publish an editorial to explain the situation, then write the review based on a retail copy. If your reviews are trustworthy enough, it will make them think twice about refusing review copies. Ethics are probably the most important part of journalism and even being under suspicion of fixing scores should send up a red flag. In fact, video games is the only medium I can think of where reviews have such problems with ethics. Film studios have learned to accept poor reviews because most film reviews have solid ethics. You don't see Ebert changing his mind about the Twilight films just because the studio threatens to pull their advertising. I don't know what we have such a problem with video game publications. Also, side note as it has stopped being relevant at this point, but I actually don't know the credibility of the OP's source. I probably should have looked at it first. Meh, I'm going to blame the fact that it was about 12:30 and I had just gotten home from picking up Assassin's Creed III and, as such, am tired.
The problem is that this may be more accurate than you realize. Remember the case when Gamespot's review of Kane and Lynch was a 4/10 and immediately afterward, the review's writer was fired? Notice that bigger and more commercial sites tend to score popular, but rehashed games like Madden and Call of Duty and constantly give 9s and 10s, while smaller, less commercial sites like Kotaku (credibility based on their tendency to report on minor and insignificant rumors notwithstanding) and Blistered Thumbs will give the same games much lower scores? Likewise, less popular, but still rehashed games like Dynasty Warriors (saying this as a Warriors fan) get low, mediocre to average scores from the bigger sites, but sites like Blistered Thumbs give them scores on par with the popular rehashed titles. The point is, I question the ethics of IGN and Gamespot editors for several reasons, this kind of news is just one of them. And take it from me, a journalist, if a journalist doesn't follow journalistic ethics and has no journalistic integrety, then they should not be trusted. See, the thing about reviews is that they are ultimately opinions. Professional and journalistic reviews are usually done with the writer eliminating as much bias as possible, while looking for things that make what they're reviewing unique or well made, ultimately tying it up with their opinions. So preference isn't the only thing that goes into a review. Another point against Gamespot and IGN reviews are the occasions when the writer will admit bias against or for what they are reviewing. This should never ****ing happen. It is their JOB to look at the games without bias and go into it with a clean slate. If they can't get over their bias for or against a game, they should not have been assigned that game in the first place.
I'm probably going to regret getting involved here, but hey, here goes. First of all, let me say that I consider myself a feminist. No, this does not mean that I hate men, which would be silly as I AM a man, it just means that I believe in gender equality. That is what feminism is, not the man-hating women supremacy demanding nuts that have stereotyped feminism as complete batshit insanity. Ah, this old thing. A white suspect hurting a black victim is not automatically called a hate crime. Generally, there are clues that point investigations to declaring it a hate crime. If the suspect has a history of associating with racist organizations, race motivated crime or makes racist remarks, then there are clues pointing towards their crime being a hate crime. Investigators aren't going to assume that the crime is a hate crime without evidence to support that assumption. This is an example of a double standard that the feminist movement is trying to stop. In the eyes of the law, if a woman commits a crime towards a man, she is as much as criminal as a man who would commit the same crime to a woman. You are basing your opinion on something that just flat out isn't true based on society's idea that men are "strong," while women are "delicate." In the eyes of the law, men and women are treated equally, as they should be, but in the eyes of society, things aren't quite as nice. Part of what the feminist movement is trying to do is stop these kinds of double standards for the sake of everyone, not just women. However, it has been time and time again been proven difficult due to how society sees how men are "supposed" to be and how women are "supposed" to be. As for the "reverse hate crime" thing, well, you're right, there is no such thing, but not for the reason you think. "Reverse racism" doesn't mean anything. It is not uncommon for people to assume it means racism towards white people, which is ridiculous because racism towards white people is just racism, plain and simple. It is not inconceivable that someone belonging to a minority could be charged with a hate crime towards a white victim if there is evidence to suggest that it is a hate crime. I would be interesting in seeing numbers on this and would assume that society believes that minorities are incapable of being seen as racist by the law would be because white committed hate crimes get more press than minority committed hate crimes. Because, quite simply, there is a **** load of racism, sexism, homophobia and general bigotry left in the world, despite the efforts of equal rights movements and organizations, equality laws and decent people in general. If a crime is committed based on bigotry, such as a gay man assaulted for being gay or a black man having his property vandalized by white people just for being black, it IS a hate crime. Of course, despite all this, it is not, nor will it ever be, nor SHOULD it ever be, illegal to be a bigot. Freedom of speech protects hate speech. What it does not protect are crimes committed based on hatred, nor does it protect bigots from consequences to their bigotry. And the award for missing the point on what equality actually means goes to... This guy! Equality isn't "everyone is the same." Equality means that one's actions, rights and freedoms are not determined, justified or limited based on race, gender, sexuality or anything else that could be considered "different." It amazes me that so many people don't understand such a simple concept.
Ok, so I've been playing the game since it came out (nearly got it 5 days early, but Target's computers blocked the sale...) and I've got some things to say about it: Gameplay: Not a lot to say here, but I feel like they took a little bit of a step back. In Black and White 1, the only HM you needed to finish the game was Cut... And you only had to use it once after the first gym to give a tutorial on how HMs work. Otherwise, the HMs existed purely for the post game exploration. In Black and White 2, you only need two HMs and they're two of the three best HM moves in the game, Surf and Strength. However, while Surf is always useful due to its high power (though outclassed by Scald, which is a single targeting Surf that has a chance to burn), Strength is not quite as useful. While it has the same power as Surf, its Normal type means that it won't deal super effective damage to anything. This is actually one of the reasons I continue to maintain that Strength should be a Fighting type move. Well, at least Strength, while mundane and average, isn't an outright bad move and we don't need useless and near useless trash like Defog and Flash anymore. Also somewhat disappointing is that the difficulty seems to be lower than it was in Black and White 1. Granted, I am happy that they nerfed the hell out of Elesa, but despite nerfing, she's STILL the hardest gym. Even Drayden isn't all that hard. Really, the only bosses I felt were all that hard were Elesa and the final Team Plasma boss... and even then it was mostly because of a certain pair of Electric types that will never cease the irritate the hell out of me due to their immunities to Ground. Also, I LOVE that there are a LOT of Legendaries from across the last three generations. Story: Again, I feel like they took a step back. I will try to avoid spoilers, but no real promises. In Black and White 1, Team Plasma played an integral part of the story to the point of subverting the usual Pokemon story of "You're a young trainer trying to become the strongest in the region and you fight and defeat an evil team along the way," with varying degrees on which part of the story has more focus (IE, Johto is mostly about becoming the Johto/Kanto Champion, while Hoenn is mostly about fighting Team Aqua and/or Team Magma) Black and White 2 isn't quite so lucky. Its not bad, don't get me wrong. The story more than does its job of expanding on the plot of Black and White 1, but it feels like we fell back into the usual Pokemon story. The story is more about becoming champion, oh, and you fight Team Plasma along the way. It feels like they covered the same ground that they covered in Johto. Again, don't get me wrong, its not bad. It was really interesting to see how Unova had changed over two years and I am happy that the path wasn't quite as much of a straight line as it was last time (though it was still a little too much of a straight line if you ask me as they don't give you a single town without a gym between the second and sixth gyms, so there's little time to catch your breath), but you really don't get largely involved in fighting Team Plasma until near the end of the game and it could have just as easily been resolved in the same way much earlier in the game. In fact, there isn't a single Team Plasma oriented dungeon until that point. The expanded regional Pokedex: I've got mixed feelings on this one. On one hand, wild Riolus are AWESOME. I had a ****ing Lucario by the time I beat Roxie! I love that! I also liked seeing the return of classics like Onix, Grimer, Trapinch (which I actually run in my party as a Flygon) and so on and so forth. However, I am so sick and tired of Rattata and Zubat. They're everywhere in Gens I-IV and, even with their obvious replacements, one of my favorite parts of Black and White 1 was noting having to run into the same ****ing Pokemon I've been running into since 1998. Hell, I say this and I LIKE the Zubat family and have considered running Crobat instead of a bird from time to time. Other thoughts: Ultimately, the game is great. Its a great Pokemon experience for both new and old players. The updated Unova is awesome and story does well to tie up Black and White 1's loose ends, despite being a bit of a step back. I've put about 50 hours into the game, not including the time I spent before restarting when I finally realized that I hated using Tepig (five gyms in), have beaten the main story and caught 8 of the game's 15 Legendaries (Cobalion, Virizion, Terrakion, Cresellia, Heatran, Latios, Uxie, Mesprit and Azelf in that order) and am currently trying to find the Legendary Golems. Also, my team is as follows: Samurott (Jack) Typhlosion (brought in from Black 1, which was in turn brought in from HeartGold after the first gym) Staraptor (brought in from Black 1 from Platinum after the first gym) Lucario Galvantula Flygon I WAS going to use Donphan (which was, like Typhlosion, brought in from HeartGold as soon as I had the chance), but I chose to go with Flygon so I could run a Dragon again after being happy with the result of running Haxorus in Black 1.
Wrong. It is rarely INTENDED to be sexist. Most of the time its ignorance. Yes, designing a character with unrealistic proportions and skimpy clothing is totally not trying to design a character to be eye candy, not at all. Do you even know how to write fiction? The characters are the PEOPLE in the story. They are the PEOPLE the events of the story affect. That is why it is so frustrating to see games, anime, movies, etc. portray the characters unrealistically. If the characters don't react realistically to their situations, regardless of how realistic those situations are, suspension of disbelief can be shattered.
And that excuses sexist writing? As you can't seem to get through your head, despite multiple people saying it repeatedly, the issue is not and never will be that women in games are attractive. It is absurd to say that that is an issue. The issue is that they're eye candy first, characters second. Claiming that sexist writing is ok because "its not real life" is ****ing idiotic. Its not "artistic license" to portray a woman in a sexist manner, its sexism, plain and simple. Not to mention the fact that, regardless of it being real life or not, these characters are still people. Suspension of disbelief can only go so far, regardless of how "realistic" the story is.
Honestly, the Fallout 3 example is a rare case where portraying a woman as an object is done well because it doesn't glorify it and, in fact, makes no effort to hide how horrible it is. As for the rest of your post, you have, like so many others, missed the point. Sort of. You clearly understand that characters can be written well, regardless of gender, you just seem to think that I'm trying to tell people how they should be written. Its not about trying to press some bullshit black and white morality. Its about the fact that many games don't even try to portray women as more than eye-candy with a personality that can be described as a man with a slim figure and breasts. Women in real life are just diverse as men, but women in video games are written unrealistically more often than not.
