If you're going to boycott fucking video game publishers because of their unsavory business tactics, then you would be nothing short of a hopeless hypocrite if you don't also strip off all of your clothes, run into the woods, dig a hole with your hands, and bury yourself in it. Then and only then, might you possibly be shielding yourself from shady corporate influence. If you tried to forego buying anything tied to a shady, dickhead corporation, you would be wandering around naked eating grass. Or maybe wearing an imported, $200, handmade hemp poncho, but still eating grass. Or maybe a $5 "organic" tomato that was grown by a shady, dickhead corporation right next to the pesticide-soaked tomatoes but adorned with a sticker that says "organic" and twice as expensive, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Point is, you can't possibly boycott everything. Corporations run our world. Literally. Fine if you're going to do it, but find something a little more significant than video game publishers.
I haven't played this particular one, but I've played plenty of similar ones, and I don't see any reason why you couldn't pick up on it. It would definitely be a sharper learning curve than most sports games, though. Baseball as a spectator sport is sometimes hard for latecomers to get into because it's very stat-driven. Even if you don't know jack about it, it's still pretty easy to follow the action in American football. But baseball is slow and methodical; most of the real "action" is taking place in all the hidden statistical matchups and seemingly cryptic abbreviations that provide the import and suspense behind each swing, pitch, catch, or error. You won't need to know all that beforehand, I don't think, to be able to get the game down, though. I don't know nearly as much about hockey as a Canadian, or as much about soccer (football) as, well, the rest of the world, but I still enjoy the hell out of the video games. In fact, it's the video games that actually taught me everything I know wbout those sports. I haven't really played or watched either one, at all.
It's kind of hard to avoid a "simmy" bend with baseball games, so that will be there, for sure. But not so much with this one as with the Out of the Park series for PC. Those are true baseball franchise simulators and would likely make no sense to anyone with spare knowledge of the game. I think you'll be good, a little extra effort maybe, but if you're as big a graphics whore as you say, might be worth it.
Doom 3 for outright, shrill scares. Silent Hill 2 or 4 for general creepiness. Resident Evil 4 or Dead Space for a good middle-ground experience with good combat.
Don't know how picky you are about combat. That's often the sticking point with survival horror games. Some of them ladel on the atmosphere, gore, and scares, but just kind of tack on a generic punch/kick/use-item battle system that serves only the most basic function. If you're OK with that, Silent Hill would be great. It's like being awash in a very creepy dream and just trying to find your way through; puzzles and key-fetching more than aciton. But very good in its own way. If you want a deeper combat experience, I'd recommend Dead Space or Resident Evil 4 (no sense messing around with any previous REs if you haven't already played them, and you're picky about controls--they all control like shit except for 4); Doom 3's just a FPS, obviously, but it's goddamn scary. Play it in the dark, alone, with a good set of cans up high, and you will definitely be on edge.
I'd have to agree that Apocalypse Now is the best. I'd put Schindler's LIst in there, too. The opening scene in Saving Private Ryan is probably the single best depiction of the act of fighting in any war movie. Glory is another one that I really liked. Black Hawk Down was good, but I don't think it deserves to be on a list with some of these others. Likewise with Braveheart. Overrated. Too belicose and preachy.
Game Informer gave it a 9.5, and they're usually a little stingier than IGN, so yeah, I was a bit surprised that BC2 didn't break a 9, but so it goes. Critics can be retarded. I think it's going to be fucking awesome, personally.
I've never given it much of a shot. Watched it a few times and got pretty bored. Brain too hardwired for high-scoring, American sports I guess. But I like baseball, so maybe I'm just a hypocrite
I've used the name Gog for all my game saves for the past 12 or 13 years, but when online gaming started to hit, it was always already taken. Fuck that! I am motherfucking Lord Gog, not you! So I got pissed and came up with FrankFartmouth, because that's what I'd like to do to the guy who ruined my username, fart right in his mouth.
I have actually managed to squeeze in a variation of Gog on some sites, such as Lordgog all run together (G4), or supergog (ebay), but I've kind of grown fond of frankfartmouth now for online stuff, so it's fartmouth online and Gog at home. Fine.
Gog, by the way, is taken from a short passage in the Bible where God instructs the Israelites to look out for this bad motherfucker named Gog, "So said the Lord God: Behold, I am against you, Gog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal ."
It's one of those passages that's endlessly and pointlessly interpreted. Is Gog a person? A demon? A nation? Nobody knows. All they know is that God hates him and wants him to die, because he's so dangerously smooth. And his name kind of sounds like a bastardization of God, which makes him sound almost like God's deranged doppleganger. Nice! I learned about him from some Jehovah's Witnesses who knocked on my door to tell me that Gog was on his way to lay waste to everything I hold dear, which I thought was funny since news of that magnitude would probably be better disseminated with a website, or at least a megaphone, but they were just casually strolling through the neighborhood, pattering on a door here and there to warn people against blood transfusions and, oh by the way, a demon is on its way to raze your city.
All those franchises deserve another go, but I'd agreee that it's DK that's gotten the biggest shaft. The last proper DK game was really fucking good. There's no reason why Nintendo can't clock him in again. But why stop there? They might as well just revive all their franchises since their 3rd party support sucks so bad. Let's see some Kid Icarus while we're at it.
The late 60s to mid-late 70s were the best era of filmmaking, in my opinion. If you're into character studies and actors' actors, stick to that period and you almost can't go wrong (not that plenty of shit didn't come out then). Some of my personal favorites: The Last Detail, Chinatown, Harold and Maude, Dog Day Afternoon, The Last Picture Show, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Godfather 1 & 2, lots of others. Sorry to say it, but as much as I love Star Wars, Lucas ruined everything. After 1977, the primary focus in Hollywood shifted away from pumping out lots of quality films in a given year to just being able to make at least one "Star Wars." And it's been that way ever since. Big productions always existed, but they weren't the norm; characters, writing, and originality were the bread and butter.
Shenmue's the oldest one on that list by a good amount. If you adjust for inflation, it would actually be closer to $90,000,000. Not that that matters much
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