Ah, but there's hope! I've heard through the grapevine (aka, TVTropes.org) that Bioware's planning a male/male romance option for Mass Effect 2.

If it's with Wrex, I'm leaving.

But then again, the website seems to be a Gamespot or IGN-style site where it doesn't want to be seen as more than a entertainment hub. I don't expect a 10 page conclusion. (Snip) Like a CNN story on TV, how much can we really expect them to propagandize while maintaining a veneer of press neutrality? Perhaps your frustration is better aimed towards people like the Miller guy.

To me, this just means they had no business running the article to begin with. I'm all for improving the quality of entertainment in all aspects, but that process certainly isn't, in itself, entertainment, nor should it be passed off as such.

I'm sure we don't need to argue about whether or not mass-media in general needs to un-fuck itself something fierce. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean about propaganda, but I'm not at all prepared to accept that propaganda is a necessary part of news reporting.

And I disagree that gamers don't care about offending people's heritage, and only how fun a game is. I think it's very obvious that people would not play games that have you massacring certain sectors of society. The question is often about what sectors of society are OK to humiliate and which are not, and to what level.

I completely agree with this, I wasn't trying to lump all potential ethnic cleansing plots or all gamers into one take-it-or-leave-it pot, I just don't think it matters anyway and the discussion is the same no matter what "current" offensiveness is the subject matter.

Finally, I really don't think Cole Train is an offensive character. I wouldn't be surprised if non-black liberals were more offended by his character than black liberals are, even. There seems to be a strange definition of "tolerance" in some circles of America where everyone must act like a suburban, middle class type person.

Neither do I, I was just using it as an example because the article did (trying to making a serious point with something silly was, admittedly, pretty silly itself.) He is certainly a stereotype, though, and it certainly punches another hole into the article; stereotypes aren't always bad the same way literary tropes are not always cliches. After all, they exist because they happen in reality every now and then.

I will say I find the Gears of War franchise to be offensive to good game designers everywhere though. Gears of War 2 was so pointless.. story sucked, multiplayer sucks, weapon balance sucks. CliffyB is the Michael Bay of the gaming industry I tell ya.

Oh god, this. Let's introduce people that the existing characters act like they've known for years despite no previous mention! Let's foreshadow heavy story development and then drop it to move onto more, but completely unrelated, foreshadowing! Let's have a husband euthanize his wife whom we've never met before because IT'S SHOCKING and...well, we made "deeper story than Gears 1" a major selling point in the hype and damned if this won't get the frat-boy demographic all teary-eyed! Let's get pissed because we can gaurentee twice as many people played Gears 2 as bought it and this makes us think charging second-hand buyers to fight final bosses to make sure they give the developer money is a good idea! CliffyB needs scissors! 61!

So glad I paid for MGS4 and only rented Gears 2...

It wasn't about expecting my minority to be talked about despite it not being in the title, it's the attitude they take. The tone of the article is what turns me off. Everyone in the article is talking like racism, the actual, physical state of feeling anti-(insert ethnic minority here) is the root of all problems, or even just the root of this actual problem. We can change the world if we just get serious enough about racism.

Don't get me wrong, homosexuals do this all the time too, and I don't approve of it from there anymore than here, but I'm sick of people talking about single issues like it's "fix this or its the end of days," and I'm sick of people thinking that talking to others who already share their views is making progress. An article on the Internet is going to do nothing. You and I will read it and think, "Yes, that's true, racism exists in videogames, and it's bad." Someone who's never given this any thought will read it and think either "Wow, that's crazy, I never thought of it like that" or "who cares? I just want to play videogames." The thing is, that last guy isn't the only one who's going to go out and buy videogames, all of us will.

This kind of attitude completely ignores things like why racism occurs, why do people who are smart enough to see it deliberately perpetuate it (the aforementioned example of the exec talking about the white-boy demographic, for example) as if all we have to do to get rid of it is rage at it hard enough.

Hell, racists themselves are usually more passionate than this, but telling us in epic fashion about their beliefs doesn't change our minds, does it?

Really, what you need to do is convince people to speak with their wallets, not convince them to be angry. It might sound like these two things should go hand in hand, but they really don't. Of all the people who read that article and agree wholeheartedly, how many do you think will boycott Gears of War 3 in protest of it's African American stereotypes?

Probably none. Certainly not enough for Epic to sit back and say "Doing this is costing us money. Let's change based on the reasons they're giving." The article is useless in this respect; a bunch of people writing about a serious topic on the Internet are not going to give anyone a good reason to change. Not the developers, and not the gamers, who care more about if their games are fun than if they're stereotyping someone's heritage.

Lawl, racism. Being gay and still waiting for a gay guy in the protagonist role of a game somewhere, let alone one who actually acts like a normal person who happens to be Not Straight instead of a limp-wristed stereotype, I empathize with this.

Then again, being gay and seeing what was at best a passing mention of my minority in six pages of Oprah-style "this is srs bsnss" writing, my sympathy, admittedly, waned a little.

Games like Assassin’s Creed, which features a supposedly Arab protagonist who is clearly Caucasian and speaks in an American accent, are rolled out without protest...

Of course, considering Altair is not the protagonist (that would be Desmond) and the Animus is just filling in Desmond's image for Altair as he "plays." Rather ironic that they bash on the ignorance/lack of common sense on the writers' part that results in unintentional, tongue-in-cheek racism, and then use something where the writer is a clever bastard subverting this crap as an example because it's a blatant visual discrepency without doing the research behind the visuals. Admittedly, symbolism like that is, nine times out of ten, done for the lulz by the writer more than for some deeper meaning, but still.

I guess my confusion stems more from the fact that these are also criticisms leveled at cinematic-style games in general. Obviously, a pretention to a highly cinematic experience means less depth and, indeed, less direct content. The combat is certainly an example of this, as it prioritizes the look and flow over what it gives you to actually do, I just don't understand why that has any effect on fun. Plenty of games are fun for being far more complex than this, but on the other hand, plenty of games with more complexity also fall flat on their asses.

I can perfectly understand that someone may not be able to have fun with this kind of execution, but even if it's just boiled down to that, the idea that there's something inherently wrong with the game just because it lacks input complexity or challenge is silly. I'm probably in the minority thinking like this, though, I suspect I was the only person in the universe who liked Devil May Cry 2 a few years back...

We should have an Avenue Q singalong outside this dude's house.

I really don't understand this whole "holding down the button = it sucks" mentality over this game. Okay, so it's less effort than tapping the button multiple times. How is tapping the button multiple times more "deep?"

Then again, the Wii is just waving a TV remote back and forth in place of tapping a button, but an inordinate amount of people seem to equate this with virtual reality and deepness, so who am I to talk...

I'm not sure how this really works. It's fine for pre-paid phonecards and whatnot, because the plastic the barcode is printed on doesn't have a major manufacturing cost to go with it. Someone steals a DVD or somesuch (and they will even if it's useless on a dare/because they can/out of spite/because they don't know the system exists) and losing the physical product is a much more substantial loss, so making it useless once the thief gets it home hardly benefits the victim.

Not to worry, though, I'm sure if you buy a DVD second-hand, you'll just have to pay twenty bucks to watch the last scene.

Gaming has changed. Period.

This is true. I spent quite a while fuming over Force Unleashed being so ridiculously watered down from what it could've been if they'd just targeted one system instead of giving it a Wii port, until I found out the versions not on the PS3 and 360 were handled by another developer entirely. Of course, they could've not spent the money for the Wii version and made the PS3/360 versions better, but that just proves the point about there being a variety of reasons for why these things happen; in this case, stupid desicions about where to put funds when the massive expense of making games today makes it a very crippling mistake.

And that thing didn't even have a PC port. Throw in PC versions, that is to say, another variable, and watch the clusterfuck get even worse. I would add on that in addition to change being the issue at hand, another problem is that people in general tend to handle change very badly. Epic, with their recent butthurt over the second hand market, is a perfect example of this. People have less money right now so more and more buy used games. They handle this change by deciding charging second-hand customers after the fact is a good idea. Change is very, very good at overriding logic, it seems.

You seem like a Linux Novice that had troubles figuring it all out and just claim Linux sucks because it was frustrating.

I don't think the problem many of us who stick with M$ (lolol do you see what i did there) have isn't that Linux is frustrating, per se. Most of us on this board are, naturally, PC gamers, and PC gaming in and of itself, not even getting into how silly regular tasks for computers can get, is often an exercise in frustration.

It is, however, an exercise in frustration that comes with a hobby, and we who hold true to this hobby accept it, warts and all. The problem with Linux is comparatively few of us, PC gamers or PC users in general, consider the operating system to be a hobby. If the workings of the OS are a fascination to you, go right ahead and have fun, but the rest of us don't want to bother doing more work just to get the OS running the way we want it than we already have to do with Windows.

And yes, Linux has certainly gotten less frustrating over the years, but no matter how much everyone fanboys over it and how much user-friendliness everyone tries to add, it is more work than Windows.

Don't be an idiot. An OS actually "does" very little. All you're talking about is development platforms. Certainly, Windows is the premiere development platform at this moment, but in terms of "doing" anything, it's no better (and in some cases far worse) than the alternatives.

Of course, since it's the premiere platform at this moment, everyone who makes software that "does" stuff makes it for Windows, so this is really just semantics. Linux is stuck in what economists like to call the "vicious cycle of poverty." In order to gain more market saturation and be a serious contender for Windows, Linux needs ten times the amount of developers making stuff people care about available on it, but in order for them to consider it worth the time and money, Linux would need more market share.

Sweet shit. And they even gave Wesley his suit as a nod to the graphic novel.

Your argument is something MS put out as propaganda. There is NO technical reason why DX10 can't work on XP. Carmack also said this if that matters to you or not.

Propaganda or not, it's something that would've cost a lot of money and effort to do, and they chose to not spend it on account of feeling that it wasn't worth it. Of course, whether or not their view on the worthwhileness of it is correct is the issue, and they themselves admitted that they should have done it, but the fact of the matter is that something like this isn't a magical push-button solution with evil M$ overlords standing over the button and laughing about how they're not going to push it. Businesses make decisions based on how worthwhile they think spending money will be, and however much in error, they chose not to do this because it would have involved spending money that they saw no reason to spend.

Also, no, not everyone cares what John Carmack says.

I trust No Mutants Allowed to be one-hundred-percent objective, unbiased, and not at all the world's finest example of Fan Dumb.

It's more because they don't sell well on PC. Gears Of War and Halo both sold poorly on PC, which isn't a surprise given how badly they stand up against PC-centric titles. Halo 3 was graphically poor at release, so there was no way it was going to be successful on PC after a delay for the X360 exclusivity. GOW2 was stronger graphically but weaker in terms of gameplay, as third-person games aren't widely accepted on PC (I haven't played a decent one since Rune). Still, Halo Wars stands up in terms of graphics and Ensemble has a pretty good record on gameplay, so there's no reason to think a PC release would be the weaker of the two.

That too, but the mindset of devs is usually "PC sales are suffering for ANY OTHER REASON than players simply not liking the game," and in Microsoft's case, at the beginning of the year, they rather tactfully admitted that they prefer this scenario:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/microsoft-game-studios-europe-part-2

“But in Germany for example, we want more gamers to buy our Xbox 360. If we launch a game that is on 360 and PC simultaneously, we basically shoot ourselves in the foot by allowing the German market to choose to play the PC version – because they are more likely to buy that than spend their money on the Xbox 360.”

I would imagine this is because having a game on the 360 means a share of the profits for every single unit goes to Microsoft for the license. If a similar system exists for games made to run on Windows, I'm not aware of it, but I can't think of any other reason they'd want you to buy their sold-at-a-loss console to buy their games on.

Isn't the Halo horse beaten to death yet?

I'm not sure why anyone would expect a PC port, or one within a relatively sane timeframe after Microsoft admitted they deliberately sabotage PC gaming by keeping Halo and their other A-list 360 titles console-exclusive to sell the 360 in countries where it hasn't caught on yet.

I wasn't expecting "awesome" so much as "competent." The first game wasn't going to win any awards, but at least it was like playing a good war movie and it made sense. Epic themselves were touting the story in the hype.

Anyone who's played to the end of Gears 2 knows damn well that they have another one planned already. The "story" doesn't resolve anything at all and ends with what I suppose would be a cliffhanger if the game was written by someone capable.

It's a fun game, it has some really shitty spots, but the writing and dialog is almost physically painful to sit through.

THIS.

I can't believe what a let-down the campaign was. All that hype about the more character-oriented plot and nothing of the sort happens. Maybe the usual XBox demographic was shocked and awed at Dom shooting his wife (and believe me, this doesn't even deserve spoiler tags, it's done so badly,) but I've seen better character development written in fanfiction.

In point of fact, Gears 2 feels a lot like fanfiction. The plot isn't even on the Road to Nowhere, it's just broken down on the shoulder of it. The entire game spends its time setting up interesting things and making you go "ooo, this looks like it's leading up to a huge twist!" or at the very least "Hmmm, this seems like it's foreshadowing something later," and then summarily drops everything long before the next chapter even starts, never to mention it again before a new, even more outrageous tease is proposed and then again dropped.

The supposed character focus is a joke and consists mostly of a few offhand scenes and lines of dialog, none of which is executed believably or even directed well from a cinematic standpoint. It's like it was all shoehorned in after the fact. Story progression is an absolute mess, and you don't even have to think very hard to start feeling like the things people are doing make no sense at all. The stupidity of where the plot goes from one point to the next is, in itself, enough to kill suspension of disbelief. It hurts to think someone got paid to write this.

Sorry, CliffyB, I gave Gears 2 a shot, and my conclusion is, quite simply, "You ruined it." The plot is silly, the character derailment is massive, and for all your epic burns against the competition, you really just pulled a Halo 3.

Some people don't have time to read every article as a whole because they are busy with "real life" (TM)...

...but you have time to comment on it?

I really don't see the point whatsoever of this bonus you speak of. If this is how you play, then stick with Normal or Hard mode. The Plasma Cutter, for example, is essentially twice as powerful of a weapon in Hard Mode then it is in Impossible.

I meant this more as a criticism of how the New Game+ in this title works than anything. It has nothing to do with the act of dumbing down the difficulty to be the equivalent of a lower setting, some of us just like breaking the fourth wall by jumping into the harder difficulty with all the paraphernalia gathered resulting in unreasonable preparation.

I buy used ones off Gamefly from time to time. I try and spend no more than $20 and I'm pretty happy with most of those purchases. It's hard to be upset when a game costs $15-$20.

I've started doing this more and more myself (haven't been on Gamefly that long,) and it's especially nice considering their used game prices are better than the absolute ripoff generator that is Gamestop.

I've actually managed to convince some of my coworkers to ditch Gamestop for Gamefly and to order games they want to buy from online stores like Newegg and Go Gamer, because Gamestop's horrible business model thrives only as long as people keep giving them money. This gets rather hilarious as the local Gamestop is a two minute walk away and managers stopping in for lunch will try to give sales pitches about how awesome Gamestop is after they ask why no one's come into their store in awhile. Watching them try to convince people, me included, to spend more money in their store for less of a return while we're not even in their store is a hilarious example of how pathetically indoctrinated most retail-store managers really are.

Word, Tumbler. I'm a little less stringent when it comes to purchasing than you are, but it's a great philosophy. I still buy a lot of games, the ones I know, or at least guess, I'll replay often over time. On the other hand, I've saved so much money after getting a Gamefly account for everything I know I'll only play once, it's not even funny.