Image: A.F. Bradley, 1907.

It has been announced that two exceptional volumes from classic literature will be republished in February of 2011; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Both books are already available free as a part of Project Gutenberg, so you might ask why they are being reprinted. The publisher, New South Books, is re-releasing the books in order to make them more “classroom friendly.”

By that they mean they are removing racially or sexually discriminatory words from the novels to be replaced with less offensive words.  The editor of the novel is altering a classic piece of literature they hold the rights to publish in order to make it more sell-able to schools and libraries.

…teachers told him that they couldn’t use the original editions of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer because teachers said, “we can’t do it anymore. In the new classroom, it’s really not acceptable.” According to Publisher’s Weekly, “Gribben became determined to offer an alternative for grade school classrooms.”

- Suite101.com

I am all for making reading accessible and fun to people of all ages, but censorship is never the answer.  Most classic literature is rife with sexism, racism, and generally discriminatory behaviour.  If a novel isn’t acceptable for grade-schoolers to read any more, then maybe you should bump the book up to a higher reading level. What do people think?  Should we take a black marker to To Kill a Mockingbird next?

No ports. No release 6 months later with no mouse support, and lackluster presentation for full price.

PC gaming has been a hotly contested subject for a long time, make no mistake. Ever since the Xbox first came out, people have been proclaiming “THE DEATH OF THE PC IS NIGH” and other such fear-mongering. Generally for no better reason than some kind of superiority complex, because they want to feel like they’re getting value for their money when they spend upwards of $300 on a computer that is only really able to play games. There’s very little proven truth to these statements, and actually quite the opposite if you don’t simply look at NPD statistics, and add in the much more profitable category of digital distribution.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably seen the dire posts such as “Spore most pirated game ever; over 500,000 downloads in first week of release”; and that the supposed “failure” of Crysis was entirely attributed by the developer, Crytek, to be due to software piracy. Noted for originally PC-exclusive games like Unreal Tournament, Epic announced in April that they wouldn’t be porting Gears of War 2 to PC, like they did the first iteration of the title, because of piracy issues.

And while both Crysis, and Gears of War were both pirated more than Ukrainian weapons transports off the Somali coast, I think there’s a much better explanation to why they didn’t sell as well as expected on PC. They weren’t very good games.

Sure Crysis was shiny, and was “A spectacular and beautiful sci-fi epic.”~ PC Gamer UK; but there sure wasn’t a whole lot of gameplay there. Most people could beat the entire game in under 9 hours, the voice acting was mediocre, the story was predictable most of the time and the rest of the time is was unpredictable in a predictable way. The game was hyped all to hell by the critics, but hype doesn’t sell games, or at least not a lot of them.

Gears of War was almost groundbreaking on the Xbox 360. Cooperative, bloody gameplay that used cover elements, and had a very tactical approach to gameplay. Mix in visceral weapons, a tragic story, and boatloads of action, and you have a recipe for an amazing game. But when you port it to PC? It’s all been done before. And in most cases better and 3 years ago.

But now I think I’ve found an offender in the console market that is every bit as bad as digital piracy. This isn’t pointed at a specific company, but more a specific practice; the purchase and sale of used games.

Say I have 10 people, and I want to sell one book to each person. All 10 of those people want to buy the book, but only half of them want to spend full retail. So 5 people buy the book on release day and read it, while the other 5 wait for the price to drop. Of the 5 that bought it, 4 of them decide that they don’t want to keep the book after reading it, so they offer to resell it to the other 5 for half what they paid for it. Thereby allowing them to spend that money on another book, and the next person in line gets to read it. The last person waits until the book hits the super-saver discount bin at the grocery store, and picks it up for 1/10 the value 3 years after it’s released.

That means, of the 10 people I was expecting to sell that book to, I only actually made a profit from 5 of them. And chances are, the people that bought the book used are probably going to turn around and sell it to other people for an even more reduced price.

Now compare that to me trying to sell the book as an E-book to the same 10 people, but you can’t resell it once you buy it. The first 5 people are still going to buy the book. They want it; fast, safe, and they don’t care how much it costs. The next 5 people don’t want to pay full retail, and they don’t want to wait, so they pirate it.

What is the difference to me? I still only sold 5 books either way. I’m only hitting half of my target audience. And worse yet, chances are the people that resold the books from the first example, are most likely going to go use that money to buy used books while they’re in the book store selling their old ones, because then they can get store credit for them, and get more for their trade.

“According to OTX’s report, the used software market in the U.S. is projected to be $1.3 billion (not including systems or accessories).” ~ April 2008, [Gamasutra]

According to OTX, a global research and consulting firm that specializes in providing online research, out of a total 76 million gamers in the USA, 45 million have purchased at least one new game, and one used game in the last year. Two and a half million buy exclusively used games, with the remainder buying exclusively new games. Of those that buy games, either new or used, fully a third of them will resell an average of 60% of the games that they buy, which will then get resold, to no profit to the publisher, developer, or anyone, except for the reseller.

Through applications of store credit and buyer discounts these sales are almost pure profit to the reseller so why would games stores ever even consider selling new games at all? If you consider the number of games that “fall off a truck” and get resold, at 90% resale the first week of release, why would anyone BUY new games either? To a publisher and a developer this is just like theft. The games could have been stolen right off the truck heading to games stores everywhere, and it means the same thing as having them resold. It’s a customer that they lost, and less money to fund the next game.

“…OTX has attributed this to the current economic downturn, and has also projected a marked increase in the online sales market, along with an upturn in used game purchases at GameStop.”~ April 2008, [Gamasutra]

Used games make up approximately $1.3 billion of a $10 billion industry in the US. When I was growing up, I’d be surprised if you could even find a number, never mind one in the 15% of all sales range. There wouldn’t be enough room in all the Classifieds sections in all the world for that many ads. At what point is industry going to start looking at these numbers and wondering how they could let so much income slip through their fingers? And while many people would say that once you purchase a product, you own it and can do whatever you want with it; read the EULA that comes with a piece of software you buy. They’re absolutely medieval in the protection of their IP, and you agree to them simply by opening the product to read the EULA.

“I’d actually make the point that for us second-hand sales is a very critical situation, because people are selling multiple times intellectual property,” said Jens Uwe Intat, senior VP and general manager for European publishing at EA. [Gameindustry.biz]

I don’t advocate piracy of any kind. I purchase all the games that I want and play, because I want to support the developers that made them. If you don’t support the developers, eventually they stop making money, and therefore stop making games we all enjoy. Having said that, developers have to stop abandoning the PC over piracy excuses. If they’re going to blame the PC as being unprofitable because of people stealing their product, maybe they should look to companies like Stardock, that release products with little to no copy protection and have had great success.

I would have less problem with developers abandoning a platform because they think it’s too hard to develop for, or because that’s not where their target audience is. But PC developers seem to think that because there were x number of graphics cards that meet the minimum requirements for their game, they should sell exactly x copies of their game. They seem to think that everyone that has a PC should be buying their game, or it’s a complete failure. If I’m running a restaurant, I don’t automatically assume that I should expect to sell food to the entire population of the city it’s in just because everyone has a stomach.

Maybe if game publishers would stop forcing developers to release betas of their games at full retail price, and force the general public to squash bugs just to play it. Possibly they could start taking the time to make sure all of the content is actually implemented before the game is released, and, just spitballing here, release a finished product.

That could actually result in your game selling well. But maybe using an uncontrollable force as an excuse for releasing a terrible product looks better to investors. Kind of like blaming your dog for eating your homework.

Support the developers kids.

Tetris, originally designed by Alexey Pazhitnov, is a game about shapes. A puzzle game if you will. But a puzzle game that has entranced entire generations.

And it’s back. In pog form.

Or DS form, if you will. Nintendo reincarnates Tetris in its most polished and well thought-out iteration yet. With six distinct modes, the ability for ten people to play wirelessly off of a single cartrige, and, best yet, complete internet multiplayer. It truly doesn’t get better.

This game pretty much has it all. The lower screen is, for most modes, used for the gameplay section. While in Standard mode the top screen is classic games for the NES on a rolling demo, accompanied with the music from the game. The new multiplayer mode “Push” could actually be a standalone game, and I think people would pay $40 to go out and buy it. I know that I would. The game is basically one long Tetris screen, with both ends open. You are on the top, your opponent on the bottom, and the pieces fall towards the centre. With each line you get, you push your opponent closer to the end of his side. Push him over the line and he loses. With two players of relatively even skill, you can go back and forth for all of eternity.

I challenge each and every one of you to resist the call that is 10 player VS team battles in Tetris, and then I will ridicule you for not understanding just how intense that is.

I give this game a solid

Let me explain. People are lazy, indolent, greedy creatures by nature. Sloth is, in effect, the definition of the human character in 99% of people. This is what causes people to feel the need to shorten everything to an acronym, or to shorten their names from Timothy to just Tim.

This is what also causes people to shorten the phrase “Thank you.” to just an unintelligible sound — “Nks.”

And it fills me completely with an unutterable rage every time some fucking bastard that I just held the door open for barely even manages to grunt in acknowledgement. It makes me die a little inside every time I realize a new way that society has devolved into a completely useless wasteland of ineptitude and more importantly, ingratitude.

The Oprah Effect

People that espouse “empowerment” are largely the cause of this downfall. Empowerment is a bunch of bullshit made up by some very intelligent people that decided that if they made people believe that they had some kind of power over their lives, and the lives of others, that they could then charge gobs and gobs of money for workshops, seminars, and all the other goodies that go along with a good scam.

When people believe that they are empowered to help, control, or otherwise affect the outcome of other people’s lives, this gives in to narcissism. Narcissism leads to contemplating how great you are, which leads you to thinking about how people could be changed by your greatness, which leads you to thinking about how if you could just share your greatness through a book showing how you became so great, and how people could empower themselves….you see where I’m going with this.

Now, how does The Oprah Effect actually tie in to the dreaded “Nks.”? Thusly:

Empowerment leads to
Narcissism leads to
Contemplation of Oneself leads to
Degradation of everything that society(or your father) beat into you as a child leads to
“Nks.” leads to
Me bashing the door closed on your head repeatedly.

How can I prevent a vicious beating you ask? It’s simple. Instead of saying “Thanks”(which inevitably becomes “Nks.”), say “Thank you”. Or surprise me with a shred of intelligence and say something like “Thank you very much” or even “Much obliged”.

Really it comes down to this; if the fucking snake from Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone can say “Thanks”. You fucking can too.

Serious Sam 2

Published By: 2K Games
Developed By: CroTeam
Released: 10/11/2005

In the third game in the series, the sequal to Serious Sam:The First Enounter, and Second Encounter; Croteam manages to mash even more levels, even more enemies, and even more weapons into the mix. Mny levels have over 500 baddies(with the final level topping in at a whopping 1300), many times with more than a hundred on the screen at once.

Gameplay

Unlike the previous two games, SS2 is actually a full game. First and Second Encounter had single player missions that even on the hardest setting could be finished in a matter of fifteen hours or so. SS2 has as much gameplay as the first two games, plus a few hours extra, with infinitely more variety to the enemies, and areas that you visit. It should also be noted that the single player element is also supported for four-player cooperative gameplay out of the fucking box. Deathmatch and “normal” fps multiplayer modes are coming at a later date along with an SDK and other goodies.

One thing that this series is known for is the tongue-in-cheek comedy that abounds. SS2 is certainly no exception. Cutscenes brdige every mission which keep up the “Serious” attitude. Sam’s quips and wit continue to induce laughs, and the occasional groan, throughout.

Graphics

Graphics are interesting and varied, especially considering that the engine can render as many detailed, and enormous, enemies on the screen at one time.

My one complaint with the graphics are that even mid-range systems of today can have serious hiccups in some of the busier areas. The game can only scale so far when you have an average of sixty or seventy enemies on screen at one time.

Sound

I had few complaints about the game, but the music definitely lacks something that it had in other Serious games. It didn’t hold my interest like it could have, but it was decent enough not to grate on my nerves for the entire game.

I did enjoy the sound effects and the voice acting though, both were excellently done, and maybe studios would do well to sit up and take notice. These days voice acting can make or break a game. This definitely made it.

Overall

Gameplay:
Pros:
-lots of variety, massive amounts of fun, zombie ninjas(I shit you not)
Cons:
-levels can get repetitive by the end of the game, not enough use of zombie ninjas

Graphics:
Pros:
-well done “Cartoony” look and feel to the game, areas are varied and large, level design is interesting
Cons:
-can make even decent machines turn sluggish at times, no single areas are as memorable as First or Second Encounter areas

Sound:
Pros:
-excellent sound effects and voice acting
Cons:
-music ranges from decent, to annoying

I can safely give this game:

At which point I have to download an illegal crack in order to play my legal game, with the legal CD in the drive.

There are a number of class action lawsuits going on against various companies that use copyright protection software that then voids the players abilities to play the game legally. I’m hoping that they’re all successful so that the copy protection racket can finally tumble like a house of cards.

There has to be a better damned solution.

Technological Advances – Transparent Alumina

Usually confused with ‘transparent aluminum‘ first made popular in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, transparent alumina has different properties.

Alumina is actually aluminum oxide, natural examples being rubies or sapphires. When you take alumina in small particles and sinter, or weld, them together at a high temperature it is basically transparent.

Transparent alumina has many startling properties. Being clear, it is the obvious choice to use in armoured vehicles and aircraft. When layers of transparent alumina are stacked and sintered together, and the right polishing techniques are applied, transparent alumina is stronger than steel at the same thickness, and many times stronger than bulletproof glass.

Technological Advances – Pulsed Energy Projectile

The Pulsed Energy Projectile, or PEP, was designed for, and by, the US military as a “less-lethal” weapon.

The PEP works by emitting a laser pulse invisible to the naked eye which, on contact with the target, vapourises a small area in a burst of plasma. This creates a shockwave of EMR that can damage nerve cells, and a burst of sound which can stun the target. It is powerful enough to be lethal if used to kill instead of incapacitate.

The weapon, even in its infancy works from up to 2km away, and is small enough to be mounted on vehicles and helicopters. It weighs in at just over 230kg.

Technological Advances – Commercial Spaceflight

In 2004 enterprising company Scaled Composites made history by making the first civilian sub-orbital spaceflight funded by commercial capital. Doing so they won the Ansari X-Prize and paved the way future voyages into space.

No longer bound in by government institutions that waste billions of dollars a year on a ever-burgeoning bureaucracy, solar-spaceflight could be within reach within our lifetimes. Plans are in the works for two suborbital vessels(the “Virgin SpaceShip” or VSS Enterprise, and the VSS Voyager) to begin carrying passengers over five years, starting in 2007 or 2008. Estimates show they need only 5,000 people willing to pay the $200,000 US pricetag over the five years to show a profit. Let’s hope that they exceed that estimate.

That’s it for this week. I hope to continue with even more examples of technological and societal advances that will prove the Star Trek theory in weeks to come.

You would think that reviewing games would be lots of fun. Well, it is. Unless you have the unfortunate circumstance to have to review a shitty game. Then you have to actually plow your way through long enough to form a(relatively) well-thought out opinion on it.

Lunar: Dragon Song is an RPG for the Nintendo DS, set in a relatively classic style, with a new twist. Still the unsuspecting teenager suddenly overcome with a mission of heroic proportions, but, pretty much the idea behind this game, is you are a delivery boy. You find ways through rain, sleet, snow, and hordes of slavering monsters to deliver your packages anywhere, anytime. And get paid well to do it.

It’s a good premise; one that promises at least an interesting diversion.

It’s not. And I won’t be displaying images, because that could entice some people to play it. I won’t be the cause of that much pain and suffering in the world.

I felt like I had to be doing about ten other things while I was playing this game just to keep from being bored out of existance. Part of this is because the battles that you fight are pretty much all automatic. You attack, they attack, repeat until one side perishes. They even have the option of fighting a battle in Manual mode, or Automatic mode at the beginning of every fight. This takes a lot of the boredom out, because I can then just set it to Automatic, and go watch TV until it finishes.

There are two combat “modes” in this game. One whereby you kill creatures, but do not receive items for your conquests, only the game’s version of experience. The other “mode” being when you kill creatures you gain items, and when you clear an area within the time alotted a mystical blue chest opens up with some pertinent items inside that you can either sell or use.

Now this choice would be quite interesting if you had to strike a careful balance between the two, always agonizing over whether you fought for money or levels. But the developers chose to make it so that you can play the entire game choosing one or the other for the most part. You need to switch between them only long enough to get the items in the blue chests in each area, and you’ll have more than enough money to buy whatever items you need, and then the next thousand times you pass through that area you can have it on Experience mode to get the levels you require.

If I wanted to understate the point I could say that I didn’t find the story particularly engaging. This wasn’t helped by the fact that the game is in a horrible form of Engrish. Grammatical mistakes abound, and I don’t think that the translators had ever even heard of that mystical punctuation device referred to as a comma.

One thing I did enjoy about the game are the graphics, and the use of the Dual-Screen. The battles are fought over two screens, as a single view, as if you were playing the game on a single screen. The animations are fluid and crisp, and there is even a relatively good selection of creatures to fight(without falling back on Red Orc, Blue Orc, Green Orc, and Orc Chieftan, all just having different colours of skin — at least not as much as some games).

One thing that really aggravated me about this game is the world map. You can’t move freely about the map, nor does it show all of the locations you’ve visited. It will only show the location that you are in, and the locations you can go to from that point. And you can only access it when you are leaving an area. You can only hop a single “square” on the map at a time, and then you have to traverse the next area, monsters and all. This makes for obscenely tedious travel. We’re talking worse than a Final Fantasy game.

I’d say that if you see Lunar: Dragon Song in the discount bin, pass it by, and buy some blank VHS tapes. Watching those would be more interesting.

Overall:
Terrible execution, more boring than baseball

Gameplay:
Uninteresting storyline, too much “filler” – walking, repeat battles, etc

Graphics:
Relatively impressive, makes good use of both screens, animations are well done

Sound:
Ranges from the uninteresting to the downright shitty

I give this game:

If you enjoy trading, exploring, and maybe even a little fighting, then this game is for you. But you also have to enjoy:

Capcom-esque controls[except more controls than any Capcom game in existence]
A learning curve that is like hitting a brick wall, then finding two more on the other side.
BUGS![I don't mean the alien kind]

A rather glaring error in the manual shows up almost as soon as you launch the menu — that being that there are not any tutorials. The tutorial for the game is this; read the manual. Then after you read the 83 page manual the first time, read it again and hi-light any areas you don’t understand. The object at this point is to go onto any number of forums created on fansites or on Egosoft’s official website and find any one of a hundred threads from people that have never played an X game before. This should give you a relatively good idea of the basic controls.

The game, like many 4X games, starts you off with a ship[or two on easy mode] and a few credits. Right after the first loading screen you jump into a basic patrol mission which develops into a pitched firefight with a couple of Kha’ak scouting parties. The mission is relatively easy, and unfortunately the rest of the game isn’t representative of the first mission.

After the first mission you’re basically just dumped in space. You can continue on with the storyline, but at this point, I don’t really suggest it. The storyline ramps up in difficulty from “Novice” on the first mission, to “Expert” on the second mission. You need a better ship with better weapons and shields to hope to succeed in the story arc. This means that you need money.

Money can be acquired in two ways:

1. Trade between stations in basic goods(Energy Cells, BoGas, Delaxian Wheat, Crystals, Silicon, and Ore being some of the basic resources in the X Universe)

2. Fight. You get money from fighting in a number of different ways. Many times the ships you destroy will have valuable cargo you can collect upon its destruction. Pilots will sometimes bail out of their craft before it is destroyed, giving you a ship to salvage, as well as a pilot to sell on the slave market. Or, if you have a good enough relationship with the race who’s sector you are fighting in, you can purchase a Police licence and get paid for every pirate, Xenon, or Kha’ak raider you destroy.

Don’t let me scare you away from this game. I like this game. It’s difficult to master, but once you do you have literally an entire universe to explore. There are dozens of sectors with almost infinite variance between them. And the routes you can take in the game are just as varied. You can trade your way through the galaxy, eventually getting the resources to build factories, and purchase huge SuperFreighters to carry your cargo from sector to sector — all in an entirely dynamic “Invisible Hand” economy. Or you can join one of the different factions in the game and fight your way to the top. Eventually being able to purchase Destroyers and an armada of fighter craft to do your bidding – for good or for ill.

The largest complaint that many people have with this game[in fact with the entire series] is the bugs located therein. Personally I can consider myself lucky, most of the bugs that I’ve encountered have to do with the AI doing odd things, or the economy going crazy. But many people have frequent CTD’s, as well as large problems with control and slowdown issues, and problems with story missions. Happily, Egosoft seems to be addressing these as they are found in a timely fashion.

Summary

Gameplay:

Pros:
Deep, immersive gameplay, almost endless choices and replayability, game is heavily supported by Egosoft
Cons:
Steep learning curve, controls are numerous and difficult to master

Sound:
Pros:
The game has excellent special effects, the computer will tell you when you have a target lock, or when it is searching for a target, the weapons have decent sound effects and a good feel

Cons:
The music is repetitive and rather bland. It varies from sector to sector, but the loops are pretty short and when you spend a few hours between a couple of sectors you notice it pretty quickly.

Overall:
I really enjoyed this game, and will continue to enjoy it. The massive amounts of time that you can[and have to] sink into this game to build a trading empire in a completely dyanmic economy appeals to me on a basic level. The fighting aspect is rather beyond me, you need to be really good at it to succeed, but luckily with enough money I can buy ships and automated systems to do that for me.

I give this game:

It’s time to choose who will lead our country for the next…six months or so. And, as always, at least to me; it’s like choosing between the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Famine

Paul Martin and the Liberal Party of Canada.

The man that wants to institute a Bureacracy of Childcare, so that I can pay for the destruction of a private industry in Canada, and then it’s rebirth as a cushy government job.

This is the party that has robbed millions, if not billions of dollars from “general revenue”. They overfund projects and pad their pockets, they bribe large companies with tax dollars, and grants, so that they will support them at election time with private donations and advertising. The Liberals have raised taxes continuously for years, and then had the audacity to say that they were “balancing the budget”. Their party platform actually says exactly this — “…guarantee that government is accountable and efficient.”. Obviously they’re talking about some other countries government; because I certainly don’t see that happening any time soon.

But really…who can blame them? It’s not like they can be held accountable. Politicians are largely above the law in Canada. In Canada, to the Dictator goes the Spoils. And we’ve had the Dictator of one kind or another leading our country for most of the 20th Century.

Pestilence

A party that has grown insidiously larger for the last 15 years.

The Reform Party merged with numerous provincial Tory parties, to form the Canadian Alliance. This was to “unite the right” and form a unit to merge with the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. This was accomplished in 2003, whereby the current Conservative Party of Canada was born.

This party is somewhat of an enigma to me. Their platform changes constantly to suit their environment, and they seem willing to admit to mistakes, but they don’t seem to have much of an idea of what they’d actually be able to accomplish if they ever got a majority government.

Everything that they do seems to be more of a “Get the Liberals out of power” than a “What can we do for Canada?”. This makes them more like a retrovirus, to be cleansed when their purpose is accomplished, than a viable party.

Death

The Bloc Québécois. A party devoted almost entirely to the destruction of Canada. But, like Death itself, it has it’s merits on occasion.

Even though they want to destroy our country by creating [even more of] a gaping hole of nothingness inbetween Ontario and the Maritimes — I’ve heard they actually have some good party policies. Not that you would ever know. Their website is in French, their platform is in French, and they don’t have candidates running anywhere outside Quebec.

War

The New Democrat Party. This is the party that I will go to any length to stop. I’d vote fucking Liberal before I vote for Jack Layton.

Let’s break down their platform:

Aboriginal Peoples – Build up the infrastructure on reserves with tax dollars. Give legal space within Canada for Aboriginal peoples to have self-governance. And this one I have to quote – “Ensuring equitable participation of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples and governments in Canada’s stewardship of air, water and lands.

* Encourage environmental career choices.
* Provide specific space on boards, commissions and international delegations.
* Ensure equitable participation in environmental projects and activities, especially those related to climate change. “

I’m sorry. But exactly what do people that are 1/8th Aboriginal that have been living in largely self-induced squalor know about “environmental projects and activities”? Beyond the fact that they know they can legally poach all the animals they want no matter the season. Score one for Jack for getting the “poor underappreciated Aboriginals” on his side with government jobs and handouts.

“We are the only party with a formal policy of freezing nominations until there is a member of an affirmative action group seeking the nomination. Affirmative action candidates for the purpose of our policy are those individuals who identify as belonging to groups significantly under-represented in the House of Commons…Those groups are women, youth, LGBT, persons of visible minority, persons living with disabilities and Aboriginal peoples.”

…this party actually sponsors hiring people because they have a different colour to their skin, or different genitalia. Hiring on merit is obviously an outmoded pratice — genetic modification is obviously the way to go, since under JL’s rule that’s the only way Caucasian males will be able to get employment it seems.

This party scares the fuck out of me. Not least of which because Jack Layton is actually relatively charismatic. More than Paul Martin or Frenchy anyway. Which means it’s basically between Conservative and NDP.

I honestly have no idea who the hell I’m going to vote for on Monday. The Liberals lie, cheat, and steal; the Conservatives have to have an alternative agenda that they’re not talking about…because if their current platform is all that they’ve got, it’s scary as fuck; the Bloc doesn’t run here, and I don’t know if I could vote for someone that only speaks French, and hates anyone that doesn’t give them lots of money for no reason; and the NDP are on a Crusade for the minorities to have more rights than anyone else.

We’re all fucking doomed.

Discuss

This has to do with two things:

One – My First Aid course. Why the fuck do people have to take a course about “First Aid”. The entire course is invalidated by the fact that every chance they get they tell you “It doesnt’ really matter what you know, or do…just call 911 and try to make the person comfortable. As long as you know some basic CPR, you’re good.”

This makes no fucking sense to me. If I’m going to spend 15 hours of my evenings learning a skill that I could learn in about 10 minutes, I should damn well be getting paid for it.

Two – Krondomatic is in China.

Yes. You heard me. Krondomatic is in China. She decided roughly a week and a half ago that she was going halfway around the world. This has caused me unheard of amounts of stress.

You may laugh. Even scorn me for my concern. And though I know it will be most likely completely uneventful, at least in the horrible plane-crashing “Alive!” kind of uneventful; I challenge any one of you to have your woman go halfway around the planet without you, and not be at least a little worried.

Anyway, enough excuses, I’ll have a game review or something up for next Wednesday unless my house burns down and the world ends.

At least I’m getting paid crazy amounts of money.

Anyway, the review should be up….soonish.

(Newbs we both owe the jar $1 now.)

Now having originally seen about half of the first season when it started in back in 2001, and just coming off of Voyager and DS9, I realized it for what it was — Unmitigated Shit. That’s with capitals.

But, since Newbs recently was all aquiver about T’Pol and her sexy ass, and [mostly] because I had nothing else to watch, I started up on Season 1, and have been watching 4-6 episodes a day since then.

It’s still unmitigated shit. But not as bad as it was above. The writing actually gets marginally better near the end of Season 1, and quite a bit better by the middle of Season 2. Hopefully it’ll be good by Season 3, and spectacular by Season 4…just in time for it to be cancelled.

Such is life.

Commander out.

I, Newbs have no idea why I would only give Super Mario World a 4/5, official erratum: I give Super Mario World 5 skulls out of 5.

I mean the perfect burger. The epitome of dead cow on a whole wheat bun. If you happen to be on the Atkins diet, why even bother cooking the cow? Just go out into a field and naw on one of those fuckers all night long. You won’t be eating those nasty carbs, and you’ll have all the meat you can eat until it goes rancid and is so full of bacteria you’re growing new lifeforms within its anus.

Of course, knowing Western “culture”, the ensuing weight loss would be attributed to the lack of carbs, not the fact that you just ran out into a field in the middle of the night, tackled a 400lb cow to the ground, tore its throat out with your teeth, and ripped it apart with your bare hands while you feast on it’s raw flesh.

Bunch of savages in this country.

But I digress. If you want the perfect burger, there is but one place which you can go. You all know it. Or you’ve heard about it. Or you’ve heard about hearing about someone hearing about it. That Holy Pilgrimmage of Burger Joint; White Castle.

Now with every Holy Pilgrimmage, there must be shenanigans. Be they the chastisement of all that patron other evil burger joints. Or Cat and Dog Burger of Doom joints as I like to call them. Or just driving around, picking up ladies, and adding them to your list of conquests, which you keep in the glove compartment of your friend’s car, written on a napkin from a Denny’s restaurant.

You also have to have at least one minor infraction of a law. Whether it be jaywalking, petty theft, vandalism, or carbombing those fuckers that cut you off on the offramp. It just isn’t a Holy Pilgrimmage until someone goes to jail, and has to trade cigarettes for a shiv to fight off the rapists.

Of course. You could do all of this. Have an excellent time doing so, and possibly even make it back home to tell the tale. Or you could just go see Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle.

You’re Jade, a journalist living on the planet of Hyllis. You live with a talking pig in a lighthouse, and you shelter orphans from the war with the Domz – evil creatures that move through the universe obliterating everything in their path. You earn money by photographing the wildlife, while trying to solve the mystery of the Alpha Sections – the supposed protectors of your planet.

Let me just start out by saying that this game has huge amounts of class. Huge. From the opening 5 minutes you can see that Ubi Soft went all out with this game. The environments are rich and detailed, the characters are deep, the voice acting is suberb(and almost everything in the game is voice acted). Contrary to what a lot of people seem to think, this is not a kids-only game. It has a lot of elements and situations that make the game immensely enjoyable to kids and adults alike. And its not a cartoony Disney game. So stop thinking that right now.

The music in the game is bar none. Everything has a slightly spanish vibe to it, that is interesting, without getting overly repetitive or annoying, and the music throughout the game is varied to the point of you almost never hearing the same music from location to location.

The animations in the game were all extremely well done. It fills me with joy that motion capture has finally become a viable enough technology that it’s used in almost everything related to character animation. Running, walking, and especially fighting are all without the chopiness that infests so many games. Ubi Soft seems to have gotten this down pretty well. Just look at Prince of Persia, which has won more awards than I have fingers, toes, and other extremeties.

The graphics are excellent. From water effects that make your jaw drop in awe, to the characters themselves, which are nothing short of amazing. I had little to quibble about in the eye candy department. A game who’s graphics are good enough that every cutscene can be rendered in-game without looking horrible, is good enough to get an ‘A’ from me in the graphics department.

The gameplay is like a ball filled with icing, rubbery on the outside, and sweet on the inside. I have no idea what that actually means, but I’ll leave it to you to figure out. In actuality, the game has few flaws in the play deparment. It mixes a good combination of sneaking and fighting to keep you interested and occupied. Mix in a little racing, some puzzle solving, and some item collection and its a pretty well-balance game. The sneaking gets a little long in parts, but the game is short enough(see flaws below) that it doesn’t really get to be a problem. And the fighting is well done enough, that if you get tired of sneaking, at least in the first half of the game or so, you can always just fight your way through.

The game is far from flawless, though I doubt that there any games that have ever reached that definition. The biggest problem that I had with the game is the camera. As with all 3D games, developers still haven’t managed to figure out how to make a camera that doesn’t get stuck in confined spaces, or is hard to manouvre around corners. Ubi Soft did relatively well with constructive architecture, but in the later areas of the game, the camera just plain got stuck, and the only thing you can do is jump through unknown peril until it adjusts itself. The ability to manually adjust it helps, but only to a point.

The other (rather small) problem that I had with the game is that it’s short. Like, you-can-beat-it-in-a-weekend-without-missing-any-major-meals-or-sleep kind of short. The game took me about 9 hours without getting many of the pearls, a kind of collectible currency, above what you need. There are 88 pearls in the game, and I found 60 or so of them. This said, there is still a lot to do in the game. You can participate in races with your hovercraft to win pearls, money, and glory. Or you can do a little betting on a game sort of like air hockey. Or you can just explore the rich and detailed world that Ubi Soft has so conveniently provided. Ubi Soft seems to have found its niche in games which are relatively short, and easy to produce, but which are immensly enjoyable. I think other game companies should take notice that their 6 year $2 million production cycles which produce mediocre at best aren’t working that well.

For the $20 that this game costs, I think you could do worse. A lot worse. Most people spend more money on a movie for 1 with snacks, and get less enjoyment. So support the company and buy this game.

Sound:5 out of 5

Gameplay:4 out of 5

Overall:

The Basics

DDR is the arcade dance-craze that swept that country of mechanical intellectuals a while back. And though the Japanese are all insane anyway…they managed to pull this one off. DDR is by far the best arcade game out there…even beating House of the Dead 2 by a slim margin.



Sure you say…anyone can dance to music when there are only 4 arrows you have to step on. Sounds pretty boring to me” There is no possible way that DDR could *not* be fun… And it does start out pretty easy…one foot movement every 3 seconds or so…but then you try the next harder difficulty level and suddenly your doing 3 arrow combinations and moving your feet at a blur just to keep up.

And if the fact that you have to have almost god-like coordination to actually be good at this insane Made-in-Japan game, the J-Pop is actually pretty good, with an interesting selection of everything from Britney Spears, to O Fortuna(all sped up with a funky beat added behind them of course), and the fact that there are a *lot* of tracks in the game, each with its own steps of course. I believe that the latest edition has 73 songs in it, all of varying difficulty levels.

Whatever the hell comes after the Basics

What the hell am I going to write in this section you ask? I have no idea…so here’s a picture of a DDR machine that is hopefully in an arcade near you.

I give DDR

A little FAQ/Backhistory on MS:

What makes MS a demon company do you ask?


Obviously you’re either computer illiterate, or just illiterate…in either case you shouldn’t be reading/be able to read this site. MS propagates everything that is bad in the world – money, power, and crappy software for high prices. I’ll of course concentrate on the latter of these options of company-bashing that are forever at my fingertips.



How does MS get away with putting out inferior software products?



An easy one. No one buys mac anymore, Linux doesn’t have the software selection of Windows(or the strict user-friendliness), and Windows has insane amounts of money to pump behind their products; meaning that there isn’t actually any real production, they just pump out the same crap, with basic upgrades, for insane prices. (win95 -> win98 -> winME; winNT -> win2k -> winXP)

How did MS become a monopoly in the first place if all of their products suck?


That takes some explaining. First Bill Gates never actually wrote the original DOS. He bought it off of a 3rd party producer(who thought it was useless) and sold it to IBM for the PC. When he broke off with IBM he decided to modify the version of DOS that he had sold to IBM just enough so that they couldn’t sue him for copyright infringement. So he did that and called it MS-DOS. For some odd reason that I haven’t been able to figure out it took off as a great OS… that one still gets me…

Anywho…from there it was on to the production of Windows(which could only be run from the MS-DOS environment). By now a lot of software producers had started to create software for DOS(and Windows), and since there was a lot of software behind it as well as being almost the sole OS for the PC, people bought into it. Then it was only a short step to keep on producing software that really hasn’t advanced a whole hell of a lot from the original windows, but had people hooked because there wasn’t really anything else to use. The only other OS that has been *noticeably* successful at attracting people away from MS is Linux – and thats really only because its open source and MS can’t buy out any of the companies that sell it and add them to itself.

And yes. I’ve looked at some hentai in my random internet-browsing. It’s pathetic. You can get 10x better at any cheap-o Joe porn site; and yet there are people shelling out $30 a month US to look at some perverted old mans drawings of what he finds to be a turn-on.

And from the relatively mundane hentai we move to the tentacle-death-rape hentai. Come on!! It’s bad enough that you look at cartoon porn! But looking at cartoon alien porn! Geez…I’ve seen some bad porn…and trust me…I’ve seen *BAD* porn…but this takes the hard-on. I find little more repulsive than looking at pictures of chicks getting screwed by a multi-tentacled creature that looks like its out of a bad D-movie from the 60′s with a title of something to the effect of “Creature from the Alien Sex Pits”.

Who looks at this porn you ask?
That’s an easy one. Young guys with no taste, chicks with no guys and no stamina, and old guys with no chicks. From some of the forums on the topic that I browsed in my quest for knowledge I saw that most of the guys there were 14 and under, the chicks there liked it because it wasn’t very ‘hardcore’ and it turned them on. That’s ok in my books because a hot chick is a happy chick. There were also a lot of old dirty men…most of which probably *draw* the stuff in between the Ripping Friends and the newest generation of Power Rangers, on Saturday mornings.

Now the things that I *really* want to know is this. Who draws all of it? I mean really…there aren’t that many old men in the world…and there aren’t *that* many artists in Japan. But you check the internet search engines and there are literally hundreds of listed Hentai sites…not to mention that according to some of my Japanese contacts there are running *SERIES* of shows that run after 10 in the evening…a 12 year-olds wet dream.

In Pashtu(one of 2 languages spoken in Afghanistan) Tang is the word for Marijuana. You might think that that’s a coincidence…but really…think about it…IT’S TANG!! The only people that would ever actually drink this refreshing non-fruit 100% flavoured drink in a freezer pouch are astronauts…but then you have to ask yourself…is it really Tang that these astronauts are drinking? They always say that they send the brave space-farers into space with large quantities of Tang…but that might just be code in Pashtu for them sending some unusually intelligent potheads into space to test the effects of this illicit substance that we will now refer to as “Chem X” under almost 0 Gravity.

Now I’m not saying that testing “Chem X” on some of the finest minds in the world isn’t a good idea…hell the finest minds in the world *are* potheads…just look at Einstein… you don’t actually think he came up with the theory of relativity level do you? He was completely stoned out of his mind when he wrote E = mc2 on a blackboard. He probably thought it was the funniest shit he had seen since the Model T.

What you say? Tang is the Chem X that we have all been looking for on dark street corners and in parents bedrooms? Of course not. I never said that. Er…well I did…but ignore that…Tang does not = instant stoner…unless you concentrate it a lot and drink it like its 1999…even then you’ll probably only get a sugar high and have an intense desire to kill main and destroy anything Tang related.– hmmm…note to self — may have world domination possibilities —

Tang is also a world leader in the artificial fruit drink market…beating out both Kool-aid and crystallized iced-tea. The Tang market has seen noticiable conflict in high concentrations of Kool-aid drinking areas…such as the former Yugoslavia and South America. The terrorist attacks and geurilla warfare being waged in these areas is no coincidence…its an international artificial fruit drink market war gone mad. The Tang-ers are fighting Kool-aid int’l activists, the coke an pepsi companies are vying for supremacy over the drink markets, and the crystallized iced-tea companies are hiring assasins to fight out everyone so that they can push their obviously superior product.

In conclusion(because its 12:40am and I’m running out of things to talk about when I have no one to talk to except notepad) Tang is slowly and inexorably becoming more powerful than even the tobacco companies…its sweet blend of “Chem X” and artificial fruit flavours will take you into orbit. And that is kind of ironic since so many astronauts seem to do just that with it…

Now needing only a topic that I could write about, I did the only thing that is possible in this situation; I did the ritual Google search on the first word that came to mind –pervert. Now you might think that I came up with large amounts of child porn, as well as pictures of convicted pedophiles…but lo and behold Google spoils us again with red M&M.

Now you may ask me what a man in a giant red suit with a big “m” on it, a sideways grin, and white gloves have to do with a pervert. If are actually enough of an idiot not to see it email me at DMUSER_ca@yahoo.com and I’ll respond with how much of an idiot you are…


Now as everyone knows all perverts need transportation. And the more conspicuous the better! At the last pervert-R-Us meeting they all decided to drive plain white box-vans, preferably with a bed in back, and speakers on the top, playing ice-cream van music,to attract their prey.



Now that I knew how they caught their prey, I needed to home in on their interests and hobbies. The first thing that came up on a Google search was anime. This shows that all perverts look at anime. That means that most of Japan is included in the pervert population (sorry all of the Japanese people that I know that are going to kill me on Friday… also to Newbs who watches large amounts of anime…err…and me..who also watches large amounts of anime).



Now what do perverts look like you ask? Well that’s simple. All perverts have these basic features. Note the earring in the right ear, as well the obvious application of lipstick and pizza face. As well as poorly dyed hair. Also notice the stupid grin, like he’s been looking at porn for the last 6 hours and he just caught his kid sister in the shower…

Then on to the middle age picture.

Notice that some features have not changed. Such as the obvious application of lipstick, and the poorly dyed hair, and the stupid grin as if he’s been looking at little boys for the past 16 years and just caught his kid sister in the shower. But also notice that the pizza face has been replaced with an unshaven look that can only be accomplished by careful grooming to acheive the perfect look. I apologize as well for using a picture of Micheal Jackson…but really this is an article on perverts…quite frankly you’re looking at the #1 pervert in the world…


And that is the description of the common pervert. So if you see anyone with all of those qualities, beware! Guard you children!