If you haven't read the latest edition of the Luchazine, then you're probably, almost definitely, in fact i'm pretty sure, a communist. 

For anyone who doesn't already know, there's a really great podcast called A Life Well Wasted by Robert Ashley. Apart from being interesting and having a different take on the video games industry, it also has really cool cover art that provides me with this excellent opportunity to test my fellow giant bomb users in this Random Friendship Quiz! 
 
If you can name for me right here and now, at least 5 of the video games and the corresponding situation depicted, you'll go in to the running to receive me as your New Loyal Follower* 
 
Time starts now!
 

[Please read in either John McLane, Zap Brannigan or Emperor Palpatine voice – preferably all at once]

As a down and out renegade ex-cop with nothing to lose, I didn’t expect my evening at Dulles airport to end with terrorists hijacking my estranged wife’s inbound flight and having to play the reluctant hero once more - But hey, life’s tough, and I guess that’s just how I roll.

Fortunately, I’ve inadvertently come prepared. I’ve got the one thing those terrorist bastards will have no defence for, the perfect side-kick to compliment my already formidable, Awesome Power... Final Fantasy XIII.

[Cease McLane/Zapper/Sith Lord voice amalgam at his point]

[If you want]
 

Gritty, no-way out 1980’s airport action-drama aside – It’s fair to say my demands and expectation for this, the 13th sequel in probably my favourite Video Game franchise, are rather, for want of a better word – extensive.

Naturally, I am rather excited about the disc currently residing in my PS3. If it wasn’t for the pounding keys of my antiquated keyboard, I definitely know I’d almost certainly be able to possibly hear the realm of Cocoon, asking why I’m wasting my time on this frivolous, somewhat nonsensical post and demanding I begin tending its needs, enjoying its fantasy splendours...or something. 

Which brings me to the question I’ve been pouring over in recent days;

Besides the masochistic domination of a strange, exaggerated yellow chicken dinosaur (which goes without saying, really); precisely what am I hoping for from this final fantasy game?  It’s a painfully difficult question to answer, all yellow-chicken-straddling considered.
 
So instead, Im just going to go ahead and ask you guys.
I'm imagining there are a lot of people out there like myself, either about to, just have, or have finished playing FFXIII.  Depending on which of the aforementioned catagories applies to you, what were/are your expectations, and have they been fulfilled thus far, or at all?

So I thought I’d better take the time out of my busy schedule to address a serious issue that threatens to stab at the heart of us all and affect the very quality of the site itself – my obviously low Gamerscore.

While a precursory reading of the situation might seem to reveal simply a lousy and un-kept profile resultant from an un-healthy combination of too-few games and you know, simply being a girl – such an interpretation would be wholly premature.

Why? You’re foolishly forgetting the luigi-peach principal of course.

Now while we’re all familiar with the math – lets take the opportunity to revise anyway shall we?

According to the pioneering theoretical principles outlined by the groundbreaking Luigi-Peach paper from MIT’s prestigious Mushroom Labs in the late 1980’s - The rate at which any given female plays a given game and proceeds to accrue in game rewards is equal to that rate at which her perfect intellectual equal who happens to be but by no coincidence is a boy, accrues said achievements: then divided by a factor of exactly 1.4015.  
 

Now, a factor of 1.4015 may seem somewhat arbitrary, but careful reading Luigi-Peach’s seminal observations reveal the origins of the value to be perfectly rational and in fact, utterly unavoidable.

Considering all relevant conditions and variables, it was emphatically demonstrated that by dividing Meryl’s secret codec frequency from Metal Gear Solid, 140.15, by a factor of 10^2, we come to the value of 1.4015 – with the derivation of the factor 10^2 of course coming from the observation that MGS was approximately 100 times better than any other game released at the time, hence requiring all values originally expressed in the context of the game to be re-calculated at normal, non-MGS levels.  

Having realised this, Luigi and Peach had clearly just discovered the only logical means by which a girl’s gaming performance can be accurately calculated and definitively determined.  Hence – Taking the approximate average Gamerscore of around 5500 points into account (which we can safely assume to be principally constituted by the scores of male players), the Luigi-Peach principle predicts that the gamerscore of a given female gamer would be around 3924 points.

Now, as we can all readily determine; my score of 4100 points is discernibly higher than what should be mathematically possible.

 
The conclusion? Well, in the interests of continuing good natured interactions with Gant Bomb community as a whole: I’ll leave it to you to interpret my freakish ability to defy mathematical certainty however you like. 
 
 
 
 

(1)      If by busy schedule you realise I mean the newest episode of the big bang theory hasn’t been uploaded on TV Shack.com and found myself with nothing to do.

(2)      In game rewards meaning ‘Achievements’ or ‘Trophies’, in the modern layman’s tongue.

(3)     Clearly I jest – the only possible interpretation must surely be my sheer unadulterated awesomeness.

 
Homemade sci-fi movies are how I like to roll
 

 
So apparently ‘Infinity Ward’, a small time development studio you’ve probably never heard of, has suddenly undergone a slightly drastic staff rearrangement. The creators of such indie darlings as 2003’s ‘Call of Duty’ and 2009’s ‘out-of-nowhere’ hit ‘Modern Warfare 2’ – you’ll be forgiven if you find yourself trailing off, thinking that “If I wanted obscure industry news and speculative jargon I’d start answering Michael Pachter’s incessant phone calls” – but bare with me. 

Why? Because jokes aside, this is huge news. Which of course, you already knew. But without going into the nitty gritty and waxing philosophic, It’s nearly impossible to consider this news without reminding yourself of Activision’s nearly gargantuan list of grievous PR offenses, thinly veiled corporatizing motives  and of course; the company’s continuing distain for the actual practitioners of the industry – the artists that create our entertainment and the consumers who revel in it.  

Far be it from me to add to the nuclear intensity of the anti-Activision fire, but I find impossible to stop myself from wondering where all of this ends. What or where is the logical point at which the world’s biggest publisher - and presumably the most profitable entity in the video game industry - stops and reflects on how utterly impossible it is to run an industry of artists, scientists and geeks like it was a cheap third world factory of zombies, hungry for brains. And not even fresh brains.

Naive I may be, but aren’t all of the aforementioned in at least some way, fundamentally intellectuals? It seems so painstakingly clear that the creative and explorative nature of Video Games, probably the most rapidly developing medium in the world for well over a decade now – is strikingly at odds with the callous, stagnant and business orientated methodology governing the Activision M.O. 

But perhaps the most interesting problem here has nothing to do with Activision. Perhaps the most troubling thing is simply not knowing what to do about it all. What on earth can one gamer do? It’s hard to imagine Jean-Luc Picard knowingly nodding away at the subtle magnificence of the corporate gaming worlds cut and dry approach to gutting ideas and selling out creative talents while rapidly diminishing the quality of the consumers end product (i.e. the Guitar Hero franchise and of course, the fate of Red Octane) – but it’s almost just as hard to imagine the seminal Starfleet captain’s rousing speech and knowing smile as he outlines exactly how we will unite to drive the nefarious corporations back into the depths of Cardassian space. 

In fact, I think Jean-Luc himself sums it up well;