Wife bought me about $1000 of LEGO. I got the Death Star, Imperial Shuttle, and the Town Hall. I bought me a new guitar... PRS Custom 24 :) Santa was good this year!
It isn't the fact that there is violence, its the reckless attitude towards it. Its violence without consequence, done for the sake of pleasuring the player, borderline pornographic in some cases. If developers took the time to make you feel culpable for having just killed someone we'd be onto something. As they are now, the majority of M-rated titles are anything but "mature". They are simple-minded murder sims, made because its tradition rather than due to being an imperative part of a story someone wants to tell (an exception being Hotline Miami, which embraces how reprehensible it is). Films have violence, some are reckless and ridiculous (Kill Bill Vol. 1) some are more grounded in reality (Goodfellas) but they have discernible rationales behind why they are that way. Many games seem to lack this thought-process and the results are troubling to me. Far Cry 3 and Hitman Absolution spring to mind as recent examples. Why are they violent? What do they actually have to say about anything? If someone can tell me, I'll retract the assertion.
Absolutely. No question about it. You cannot compare Mega Man, Double Dragon, or even Mortal Kombat with the realistic violence found in modern FPSs.
Parenting is getting much more difficult. It's up to parents to take ownership of what they put in front of their kids. It's incumbent that they have an open dialogue with their children/teens and make sure they understand the difference between reality and video games. I know a lot of you are thinking, "WTF how can you not know the difference between whats real and fake?".. Well, you would be surprised how many kids become desensitized and develop detachments from reality at an early age. There are 12 year olds out there that can easily handle and understand explicit content, and there are plenty that cannot. I grew up with violent video games, and still play intensely violent games, and I would never in a million years think of ever harming a human being, or animal in real life. I owe that to my upbringing and how my parents made sure I had my head screwed on right. They never took anything away from me, but instead treated me like an adult and made sure I understood what was was going on.
He has no problems cashing his check every episode does he? He's the highest paid TV child actor. He makes something like $350,000 an episode. Want to make a statement? Burn your checks, quit the show, and live in poverty for your stupid religion.
I'll echo what Ahmad said. Battlefield 3 can simultaneously be the best, most fun online FPS game and the worst. It's highs are unbeatable and can't be matched, and it's lows will make you not want to play the game for long stretches.
We get threads like this a lot. I initially thought they were annoying, but people are addressing some issues that need to be brought to light. The crew was just talking about how real they are with their reviews, and that you don't have to question their legitimacy, but that doesn't mean much when some big games aren't being reviewed. It could be a manning issue, or a general lack of time to get what they want done (they did state that they have a lot of meetings and such ever since the move to Gamespot). I don't really care about reviews, but it looks like many people rely on the crew for them.
Not trying to start shit... Just an observation. Other than the XCOM review, what was the last piece of content Ryan produced on this website? He doesn't write features (Patrick and Alex do those), he's the only member of the site that has never produced premium content, before XCOM the last review he wrote was in February (Grand Slam Tennis), and he doesn't host ILM or Happy Hour any more... TNT seems to be the one thing he's been doing on a consistant basis. It's obvious to me at least, that his role has become a more behind the scenes one, and there is no denying his visibility on the site has decreased. Vinny doesn't write reviews so Ryan would really be the only one on the site qualified to write an AC3 review, given his decreased role on the site it doesn't surprise me one bit that the review has yet to go up.
It's funny that Patrick and Alex get the most hate around here, yet along with Jeff they are the ones churning out the most content for the site.
I live in NY. No reason to vote on the presidential election. Everyone else here picks for me regardless of what my choice may be. Popular vote means nothing, so who cares? It's much more important IMO to vote for gubernatorial and senate elections.
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