Grand Theft Auto V Review

Needlessly frustrating.

That's how I sum up my overall experience with this game. I felt 'Grand Theft Auto V' was an asshole when it didn't have to be and much like 'Red Dead Redemption', it seemed determined to punish you for having any sort of fun outside its established parameters within the story mode.

I know this game has already sold like a billion copies so what I have to say here will probably make little to no difference to Rockstar Games or its fans who have declared their unequivocal love for this series. And hey, I loved and still love to play older Rockstar titles like 'Grand Theft Auto: Vice City', 'The Warriors' and 'Bully'. But nowadays, I personally just don't understand the loyalty some people have for this company anymore. Ever since 'Grand Theft Auto IV', it seems to me more and more like Rockstar has forgotten how to make their games FUN.

Warning: Spoilers follow:

You've probably heard a few of the complaints people have had about 'Grand Theft Auto V'. The misogyny, an unskippable torture scene, animal cruelty, unlikable protagonists, etc. Personally, none of those were more offensive to me than the game's overall general attitude towards the player but let's briefly tackle those complaints one at a time.

Misogyny: This has been a staple of the Grand Theft Auto series for some time now. I sold my copy of 'Vice City Stories' after finishing it because I found it to be too vile and hateful towards women, despite enjoying the 80s setting. I've also never liked the idea of being able to kill a prostitute to get your money back after she healed your ungrateful ass in any of the GTA games, but ultimately the choice is given to you whether or not to kill the hooker after sex, so it's on the player.

As for the other women in this game, it's true they're almost all portrayed as either spoiled brats or total bitches and I can totally understand why people would be upset by this but IMHO, I felt the men in the game are almost all portrayed as spoiled brats and/or total assholes as well, so really, regardless of gender, I felt there wasn't one likeable person in the entire game.

Case in point: Fan favorite Lazlow, the only character whose been in every GTA game and whose twisted but still likable character has been slowly sinking into the muck with every new GTA game is now turned into a complete douchebag in order to justify a later unskippable scene where douchebag protagonist Michael De Santa forces the player to torture Lazlow with piercings and a tattoo needle in order to defend the honour of his douchebag daughter, Tracey. Make no mistake, I firmly believe this game hates EVERYBODY, especially the player.

Torture Scene: This scene IS mandatory in the story mode and can't be skipped. About the only good thing I can say about it is that you have the choice of items to torture with so you can at least attempt to pick the least damaging approach and repeat it until the scene is over. I seriously have to ask what was the point of it though? To parody real life events? Uh yeah, I play video games to ESCAPE real life, thanks. To make us feel bad and uncomfortable? This is a videoGAME, I don't want to feel bad and uncomfortable, I want to have FUN. Remember FUN, Rockstar?

Animal Cruelty: Again, this is a matter of player's choice but the animals in this game are all ink and paint, ones and zeroes and I really can't see this game encouraging people to go out into the desert and shoot up the local wildlife unless they live in an environment where that type of activity was already commonplace well before this game was released. I just feel any group that protests animal cruelty is better served focusing on ACTUAL animal cruelty than worrying about players running over virtual coyotes.

Unlikable Protagonists: It's hard for me to enjoy a game when you're not rooting for any of the protagonists and this game has THREE of them. Franklin Clinton was the least offensive character for me but at the same time, he's a soldier who basically shrugs off all the madness around him and doesn't really have much in the way of motivation or goals, just basically going where the plot tells him to go. He's a little bland and his character arc doesn't really go anywhere. He's like a more laid back C.J. Johnson from 'San Andreas' but with less backstory.

But at least Franklin isn't a hypocrite like Michael De Santa, who tries to come off as an older Tommy Vercetti but is far too much of a pussy for that. Michael is a retired bank robber who hates his life and is seeing a shrink, and ends up getting back into the criminal game through a misunderstanding with a local crime lord.

Oh, but now he has a family to worry about, although why the hell he would bother is a complete mystery to me as Michael’s family are completely and utterly unlikable and every mission involving them just made me want to kill the everlasting fuck out of them. Just because they're a parody of the spoiled rich dysfunctional family doesn't make having to spend time in their presence any less excruciating. Why the hell would I ever want to help and especially save any of these idiots? Oh right, because the game says I have to and refuses to continue until I do. Fuck you, Rockstar.

And of course, despite murdering hundreds of people during the course of the game, you are never given the choice to simply leave or kill your annoying family without immediately ending the game because THAT WOULD BE WRONG. 9_9

Our third protagonist is Trevor Philips who's a straight up psychopath... no wait, he's a killer with a heart of gold... no no, he's a sadist who loves to torture... oh nope, wait, he's just a tortured soul with a soft spot for the tormented... hold on, he just massacred a group of people for insulting his Canadian heritage... yeah. Trevor's character is all over the place, every time he starts to lean towards likable, he does something that makes me want to play as Franklin again just to get away from him.

And while I admit Trevor is probably the most willing and able to engage in the type of mayhem and murder that's supposed to make these games fun to play in the first place, his personality was just too off-putting most of the time and he's still a slave to the albatross that is this game's story which has him kowtowing to people that you actually WANT him to straight up murder the moment they looked at him funny but he won't. Oh, and he's also a pilot, which means you get to fly planes and helicopters with him, and guess what? The flying controls are every bit as clunky and nausea-inducing as the last few GTA games! Yay!

Fortunately, and in fairness, there were a few improvements to gameplay. The cars are not quite as shit to drive as the previous game. You can now play the stock market and actually drive down prices by attacking certain company vehicles, enabling you to clean up with their rival's stocks, which is a cool idea. There are also now mid-mission checkpoints, which was much appreciated and LONG overdue. The bank heist missions were probably the high point of the game for me, but there were too few of them and to be honest, they kinda made me want to play 'Sly Cooper 2: Band of Thieves' instead. ;P

And finally, we come to the main reason this and the last few Rockstar games have thoroughly pissed me off. Overall, it just plain wasn't fun for me to play. I find myself comparing GTA to the 'Saints Row' series, considered to be nothing more than another GTA clone with its first game, actually managed to surpass GTA IV with 'Saints Row 2', IMHO, and the series hasn't looked back since. Not in terms of game sales, unfortunately, but 'Saints Row fucking understands how to make a fun game that you'll want to go back and explore for hours on end, with a story mode that celebrates chaos and respects the player while never taking itself too seriously.

'Grand Theft Auto V' was the complete opposite experience for me and gives off the impression of being free-spirited while being almost completely inflexible with its story and what you can actually do in the game. It wants to be taken seriously at the expense of its gameplay and DEMANDS that you follow its story and embrace its characters and if you don't like them, tough shit cause you're stuck with them.

Now I won't deny being able to design your own protagonist was a big plus in regards to the 'Saints Row' series but I honestly didn't mind playing as an established character like Eizo from 'Assassin's Creed II' because he was a likable protagonist with interesting characters and a story that kept me intrigued throughout. But when I find that the story, characters and protagonists are all shit to me, then what the hell reason do I have to play this game?

And don't let the multiple endings fool you either. IMHO, there is NO freedom of choice or direction in 'Grand Theft Auto V'. The game tells you how you should be reacting to its characters and basically tells you to go to hell if you feel any differently. Case in point: When I reached the end of the game, I killed Michael as Franklin because during the course of the game, I came to despise everything about Michael, his family and I wanted revenge for Lazlow and the character he was before this game ruined him.

All of a sudden, Franklin is guilt-ridden about killing Michael, even as he's chasing him down with a gun. Then afterwards, his family is tearfully calling me and trying to make me feel bad about the murder and Trevor's character flip flops YET AGAIN and refuses to speak to me anymore out of spite.

The game utterly refused to consider the possibility that I felt completely justified in killing Michael and endlessly berated me for doing it, despite Franklin not really ever showing any signs of having a close relationship with Michael in the first place. Hey game? How about letting ME decide how I feel about killing Michael instead of lecturing me like I'm eight years old!? -_-;

That's when I realized I'd had enough. I didn't want to free play. I didn't want to see the other two endings. I didn't want to finish up any last side missions. I uninstalled the game and sold it as quickly as possible on Kajiji. Good fucking riddance.

If you haven't bought 'Grand Theft Auto V' yet for whatever reason, I highly recommend you just get something else. Like 'Saints Row IV', which may not have sold as many copies but was unquestionably the more fun experience for me. But that's just my opinion and I force it on no one.

Unlike 'Grand Theft Auto V'.

Hitman: Absolution Review (XBOX 360 Version)

You know, I was originally going to come up with a joke title for this review, like 'Batman: Absolution' or 'Hitmans Creed', but then I remembered that those games were actually good and fun to play... this game, not so much. And if I sound more bitter than usual for this review, that's because I am.

Warning: Mild Spoilers follow:

The Hitman series, at least for me, didn't get really good until the fourth installment 'Hitman: Blood Money' which I consider to be a masterpiece of stealth gaming and a title that I'm proud to have in my collection and replay at least once a year. It's always a drag when I realize a sequel is inferior in just about every way except graphics, naturally.

'Hitman: Absolution' is yet another example of a beloved series being dumbed down in order to reach a wider audience and losing focus on what made the series great to begin with. And this time not only does the gameplay suffer, but the story and the main character, Agent 47 as well. Wonderful.

Let's start with gameplay. In past Hitman games, going in guns blazing usually got you killed pretty quickly or at least raised your notoriety to such a high level that it made the game needlessly difficult, though granted, it was fun to blow off steam sometimes for tough levels that you could try again later when you got it out of your system or just wanted to see how hard the game could get by ending every mission in a bloodbath.

In 'Absolution', gunning down everyone in sight is not only considered a practical option, there's now a point-shooting mechanic where you can mark several targets at once and then sit back and watch 47 murder all of them in cool slo-mo. Except Hitman isn't supposed to be a John Woo film. Or Rambo for that matter. Not to say you don't have the option of being meticulous and stealthy with your kills but with the new shooting mechanics and lack of long-term consequences, it just seems like the game fully expected and in some spots, encouraged the player to lose patience with it and start blasting.

Also, this game has Eagle... sorry, I mean INSTINCT vision which slows down time and lights up your target like a roman candle and makes them easier to spot in a crowd. Now I can understand how some people would prefer this to looking for your target on an interactive map and that the map isn't as necessary because the areas in this game are smaller, but it just felt out of place for me, like Agent 47 had suddenly developed superpowers and yes, I know being able to spot a moving target as a red dot on a map isn't exactly realistic either. Maybe this is just a nitpicky moment for me, but I really didn't care for this kind of mechanic in a Hitman game at all.

Another thing that REALLY annoyed me was respawning enemies. When people died in previous Hitman games, they stayed dead unless you restarted the mission. This one, they come back if you die midway through the mission for NO GOOD REASON and FUCK YOU to whoever came up with that idiotic design decision. As for the multiplayer, I didn't try it so I can't comment on that aspect of the game.

Unlike previous games, 'Absolution' doesn't assign specific missions by your handler, Diana, whom I can't really discuss without going into heavy spoilers, and the entire game has you trying to protect and later rescue a mysterious teenage girl whom two baddies want to exploit to serve their own ends. More on them later.

There's also no newspapers detailing your exploits or raising your notoriety, no weapons or tools to buy, no pre-mission briefings or optional missions to take for personal gain, just you and whatever you can find in the location you're at, which would've been interesting to do for maybe one mission or two, but was it really necessary for the ENTIRE GAME?

Also, the levels in this game are much smaller, each one feeling like you're in a single large room instead of exploring a entire area. Maybe this was necessary in order to maintain the level of graphic quality with a smooth frame rate but it felt more like a big step backwards to me.

Speaking of a step backwards, let's talk about disguises. The effectiveness of disguises in early Hitman games could be twitchy and even if you did nothing wrong, you could be found out. In 'Blood Money' they improved this mechanic by having suspicious people walk up to you and either politely ask or loudly demand for you to explain your presence in a restricted area. If you failed to respond after a few moments, THEN they would pull out their guns, which was a big improvement over them IMMEDIATELY pulling their guns to blow you away if you so much as sniffed your nose the wrong way.

Well, apparently the developers of 'Absolution' decided that people should see through your disguises quicker despite what you do, forcing you to either constantly change clothes during the mission or kill the person currently annoying you. The fact that the game now allows you to stuff two bodies in a bin, instead of one as in previous Hitman games suggests to me they expected you to choose the latter option. ^_^;

Now I'll try my best to summarize the story for this game: YEE-HAW! Well, that was easy. Seriously though, it's like the developers of the previous game were replaced with good old boys and they looked at the Mississippi missions from 'Blood Money' and said "Hot Damn! We should make the whole game like that!" Maybe they should have called this game 'Hitman: Deliverance'. ^_^;

The game's... secondary villain? Primary villain? I dunno, there were a few of them and not one of them seemed all that more important than the others... is some stereotypical redneck that we're supposed to believe heads a R&D facility when the character isn't qualified to run a pie eating contest. The other villain is a typical bland American bad guy who also seems woefully unqualified as the new head of the ICA. Also notable is that both of these baddies have hot female assistants that are clearly more intelligent than either of them but they add virtually nothing to the story.

Speaking of adding nothing, let's talk about the Saints for a moment. And I don't mean the Saints of 'Saints Row' although Johnny Gat Vs. Agent 47 would be an interesting fight. I personally had no problems with the sexy killer nuns trailer that got so many people upset, because I figured those characters and their bizarre choice of costume would be explained in greater detail in the game.

Well, unless their role was drastically reduced because of all the negative publicity, the Saints had practically no presence or impact in the game at all. They were just another hit squad that appears in one level that were ridiculously easy to pick off one by one. No backstory, no explanation why they dressed like fetish nuns, NOTHING. And I don't care if the novels (which I haven't read) or the Hitman Wiki explains them in more detail, the game gave us nothing to go on and the whole exercise was in my mind completely pointless unless it was simply to generate controversy to sell the game, in which case, mission fucking accomplished but IMHO, the execution (no pun intended) stunk.

Now I'd like to discuss the main character, Agent 47 for a moment. For those new to the series, his basic backstory is that he is a clone that was trained as an assassin. He killed his creator and briefly attempted to live a normal life but found it to be impossible. He accepted this truth and what he was and became the perfect Hitman. And while he is not completely without emotion or empathy, he never lets it interfere with his job. He is also NOT a fool who takes on situations beyond his abilities to handle or acts like an idiot unless the player decides to play him that way during a mission.

In 'Absolution', Agent 47 commits several acts out of the player's control which can only be described as FUCKING STUPID. Chief among them, he gives up his famous silenced baller pistols to an informant in exchange for information, which he would NEVER do in a million years. Did the game have so little confidence in its enemy AI that it felt the need to make Agent 47 as vulnerable as possible? Or maybe they did it so they would have a weak excuse to explain away a later scene where the Redneck's main henchman, who's basically Bane from 'Batman' without the mask, knocks Agent 47 out when he attempts to GAROTTE him. REALLY?

I'm sorry, but I simply can't summon the suspension of disbelief necessary to buy that the world's greatest hitman is so stupid that he thinks he can strangle to death a man several times his own size when a bullet would do the job far more safely and efficiently. But no, the game needed to have Agent 47 unconscious and vulnerable and this was the only way the developers could think of to do it. ^_^;

Let's see, what else did I miss... Yeah, the graphics look nice, I guess. But the scope of the game felt reduced with the smaller rooms so it didn't really impress me. The music was crap, but then that's no surprise since Jesper Kyd wasn't involved in scoring this game and personally, I'm kinda glad he wasn't involved with this shit. Oh yeah, there was also a sequence late in the game where a big deal is made of Agent 47 getting his famous trademark silk suit back... which he then promptly leaves behind getting into disguise to infiltrate a building. Unless, of course, you go in guns blazing. 9_9

So yeah, I pretty much despised this game. I only played through it once and I have honestly no desire whatsoever to do so again. If you've never played a Hitman game before, I strongly urge you to pick up 'Hitman: Blood Money' for the 360 or PC instead as it is SO much better, IMHO.

Not quiet anymore...

Well, that was fun while it lasted...

On Friday (30 November), I found out that I have been let go from my position, so I am now on the employment market again --  more urgently than I was two years ago.  I am unsure how this will shake out for my current posting schedule.  I thank you for your patience and your continued support of the blog and I hope to keep providing content as my schedule (and my mood) permits.

Assassin's Creed 3 & Series Review

Before I played Assassin's Creed 3, I decided to replay the first two games and speak of my experience with the entire series as a whole. I can't speak for the quality of any internet online play as I don't play online. (Warning: Some spoilers for all Assassin's Creed games follow...)

- ASSASSIN'S CREED: Okay, I admit the side quests in this game are repetitive but a good story and interesting visuals carries it through and the mechanics of leaping from rooftop to rooftop and up the walls was a whole lot of fun for me. Despite its repetitiveness, I still enjoyed replaying this.

- ASSASSIN'S CREED 2: Improves on the original in almost every way, great environment for a game, interesting to look at and explore, and it features a very strong and likeable protagonist and support cast for Desmond. Speaking of which, Desmond doesn't get a lot of story in this one but that's okay because Ezio Auditore's story is far more interesting anyway. The ending does tend to dismiss Ezio a bit as the story's focus goes back to Desmond for the final scenes but still this is overall, my favourite of the series and definitely worth checking out even if you haven't played the first game.

- ASSASSIN'S CREED: BROTHERHOOD: Now, unlike the first two installments, I didn't replay this or Revelations before playing Assassin's Creed 3, partly because I didn't want to be burned out too soon. But I have played Brotherhood through a couple of times before and I can say that I didn't enjoy it as much as 2. One of the main reasons for this was the introduction of the Full Synchronization gameplay mechanic... let's just say I HATE IT, HATE IT, HATE IT, HATE IT, HATE IT!!!

From this game on in the series, with every mission you do, you receive a score depending on whether you did certain things in a certain way or within a certain time limit, etc. You can complete these optional requests or ignore them, but if you ignore them, you are subjected to an obnoxious red coloured 'FAILED FULL SYNCHRONIZATION' message that made me feel like I failed the entire mission even when I succeeded.

I wouldn't have had as much of an issue with it if you could turn the mechanic off but since you CAN'T, it's extremely annoying to me and rather demoralizing after beating a tough mission only to get that 'FAILED FULL SYNCHRONIZATION' because I didn't finish the mission exactly the way the game wanted me to.

The second reason I hate this mechanic is because it hurts my overall immersion when I'm constantly reminded that I am, in fact, playing a game. Finally, one thing I admired about previous Assassin's Creed games was that how you went about completing an assassination was entirely left up to you with a variety of methods and approaches to use. Forcing you to do things a certain way or be subjected to the RED TEXT OF FAILURE destroys the feeling of complete freedom I had in previous games.

"Nothing is true, everything is permitted... but if you don't do it our way, you obviously SUCK!" ^_^;

- Now there were a few new elements added to Brotherhood, but for the most part, it felt more like an expansion than a sequel, despite its length, and near the end, I just wanted it to be over and done with as opposed to 2 where I couldn't wait to replay it and discover new things.

- The new Assassin Recruit mechanic was fun for a while and it was cool to see the ceremony that make them full fledged assassins but the whole mechanic gets too repetitive after a while and got more streamlined and pointless with the next two Assassin's Creeds.

- To be fair, Desmond's story does pick up more in this one and his supporting cast continue to be entertaining. There are a few exciting sequences for Eizo such as the chase through the church roof and he finally get to use an Apple to kick some ass, but ultimately, it wasn't enough for me to replay this title again.

- ASSASSIN'S CREED: REVELATIONS: I only played through this game once and frankly, that was enough. While I appreciate the fact that Revelations brought some closure to Altaïr and Ezio's stories, and gave a little more background into Desmond, the sequences on the beach with Subject 16 were just painfully dull and Ezio's world had more than worn out it's welcome by this point. Again, it tried a few new things and this time most of them were a complete bust. The bomb making was completely pointless, the vertical Tetris sequences were just stupid and punishing. Finally, the hook mechanic just seemed out of place somehow and I'm not surprised they dropped it.

And now we come to the latest game in the series...

- ASSASSIN'S CREED 3: We have a new ancestor for Desmond and a new setting to play in. For all my griping about Ezio's story and Italy getting old and tired by Revelations, he was still an interesting character and great fun to play as so any replacement for him would have their work cut out for them.

So we're introduced to Haytham Kenway, a well-spoken yet menacing character in a similar vein to Altaïr from the first Assassin's Creed. We follow this guy for the first few chapters, which has a slow and deliberate pace, too slow at times for my personal tastes, but it serves its purpose as we get to know the character or what we think we know of him.

Then abruptly there's an admittedly cool twist with Haytham that I didn't see coming, and before you know it, we end up getting introduced to a whole new character named Connor to play for the rest of the game. You know, cause that idea worked SO WELL for Metal Gear Solid 2. ^_^;

Now granted, Connor isn't nearly as whiny or annoying as Raiden but his character is so straight and rigid, it was hard to take him seriously and it hurt the story a lot. If there's one word I could use to describe Connor, it would be STIFF. You could argue that because English isn't his first language it would make sense that his English sounds stilted and wooden but if that's the case then it still hurts the story because it makes it nearly impossible for me to get into his character when he sounds like such a tool. Some of Connor's interactions with famous historical figures makes him seems more like Forrest Gump than the assassin he's supposed to be.

I honestly wish we'd stayed with Haytham for the entire story as playing a character from his point of view instead of the Assassins would've made for a compelling story and given an interesting and fresh new twist for the series.

Desmond is almost as bland as Connor, though that's the usual MO for him, and he's outshone once again by the supporting cast, especially Shaun who is undoubtedly the funniest character in this series. We are introduced to Desmond's father, William, voiced by John de Lancie, but unfortunately he isn't given much to do with the role. After one tense argument with Desmond early on that turns physical, he apologizes and... that's pretty much it. He mostly just stands there saying stuff like 'We have to get back to work' and expressing regret for being a bad father. It might have been more noteworthy has Desmond not met the fate he did in the game. Honestly, I felt it was kind of a waste.

- One thing I've always enjoyed about the Assassin's Creed series was the historical settings they took place in and the Revolutionary War, while not quite as interesting to me as the Italian Renaissance, is still compelling. The vast amount of detail and historical content given to you is amazing, especially with Shaun's hilarious snarky editorializing and blatant pro-British bias with his descriptions of various people, places and events. However, if you're not a history buff like me, you'll probably be unimpressed if not bored to tears by all the educational content here and it may be a bit too much for some people's patience if they prefer action above all. Also, I have to say that I was disappointed by the music in this game, especially compared to Jesper Kyd's scores in previous titles.

- Another thing that I'm seeing more and more that has me concerned and disappointed is the continuing trend of dumbing down sequels to popular game series in order to appeal to the widest possible demographic. Assassin's Creed 3 dives into this trap headfirst with simplified yet awkward controls and gameplay.

One glaring example of this is the Assassination Missions. In previous Assassin's Creed titles, you were given a mission to kill someone, the reason for the killing was explained to you in detail. Once the mission starts, you first had to track the target(s) down with your Eagle vision in a yellow circle and then you usually had to overcome some extra difficulties such as getting to the target behind a row of guards or killing them without being detected and/or you had to kill them within a certain time limit. It made for challenging and enjoyable gameplay.

In Assassin's Creed 3, you're told to kill five people. No reason is given other than they're Templars. You go to each target and... you kill them. No searching an area, no guards to get past or time limit to beat. You just kill them and you win. That's it. It's easier, yes, but it nowhere near as fun.

- Another one is combat, which is smoother and more dynamic than previous AC titles but a bit too easy at the same time once you've learned the enemies patterns and it won't take long, believe me. You can easily defeat almost any enemies you face right from the get-go and there's no armour to buy and very little variety in decent weapons. I ended up buying one sword and using it for the rest of the game along with my standard assassin blade. I think I fired my musket two or three times the entire game, and one of those was during a tutorial. The interface, despite being simplified, is more clunky than previous games as well switching around several of the controls that I'd gotten used to in previous AC titles and it just seems unnecessary.

- One of the new elements introduced in Assassin's Creed 3 is hunting, although really it's been done before in games like 'GUN' and 'Red Dead Redemption', though I will give AC3 credit for letting us SKIP the skinning animation unlike RDR. You investigate clues that enable you to determine if an animal is in the area to hunt, though really if you wander around these spots, you more often than not run into these animals casually sauntering by anyway.

You can then either be methodical with your trapping or just try to run them down and through with your blade. Some of the animals fight back, resulting in a quick time sequence to defend yourself or put them down. You skin the animal and sell its various parts for cash or for a scavenger hunt mini-game. I guess it does it's job and maybe it's just I have little interest in hunting animals but I lost interest in it quickly.

- Naval Missions were one of the best new additions to Assassin's Creed and I wish more had been done with it as it was a blast commanding my own ship and having sea battles blasting ships into splinters in both calm and rough weather. I was a little confused as to why I didn't earn any money for most of the missions though but regardless, this was my favourite new addition to the series and I hope this type of mechanic can be used again in future AC titles and expanded upon, rather than dumbed down for a change.

- Homestead Missions were just sort of there, not bad but not really interesting either. The characters were too one dimensional to get attached to with the exception of Achilles. Completing their missions gives you resources which you can buy and sell for money but I couldn't figure out how to get that mechanic to work for me more than once. The in-game manual provided is sketchy at best and needed a lot more fleshing out. Apparently the historical data got top priority. ^_^;

- Assassin Recruiting Missions the same as previous two AC titles except even more streamlined with no armour or weapons to buy and no ceremony when an assassin reaches his peak. It's just busywork, like most of the side missions I found.

- Abstergo, despite us being told over and over again in previous games how powerful they are and how they virtually control the world as it is, seems so bush-league, especially here. The character of Warren Vidic has always come off as a middle management villain at best and yet he continues to be the face of Abstergo and makes them look weak and pathetic.

I realize there was a reason why they were keeping Desmond alive for a while but once it was clear that things had gone wrong, Vidic should have called in death squads with machine guns and attacked the Assassins with everything they had. Instead we get more generic useless security guards with pistols that might be able to kill Desmond if you stand still long enough, not to mention the fact that they were using these pistols against Desmond earlier in the game BEFORE Vidic gave them authorization to kill him. Oops. ^_^;

- But even more pathetic than Warren Vidic is the newly introduced character of Daniel Cross. We are told that Daniel was a former Assassin turned Templar who nearly wiped out the Assassin Order in the past. However his best days are clearly behind him as when you meet him, he's a drunk screw up and virtually no threat to you at all, even armed. This may be a more original concept for a villain but it doesn't exactly make him a compelling adversary, especially when very little is told of him overall and you kill him later in the game almost as an afterthought. Honestly, he seemed more like filler than anything else. Maybe future DLC will explain him better but I really don't care at this point.

- Getting back to Desmond, his final confrontation with Vidic, while admittedly awesome from a badass and poetic justice point of view, was just so simple in its resolution that it was ridiculous. Likewise his final fate at the end of this game was almost comical in its casualness. The conflict he is confronted with is tense and compelling, make no mistake, but his reaction to it reaches almost David Duchovny levels of blasé. All jokes aside though, I truly believe the series lost something when Lucy was killed off and it never quite recovered.

Perhaps it's best the series start fresh with a new protagonist that's hopefully a little less bland, and an ancestor to follow that's a LOT less bland in future Assassin's Creed titles.

- Before I played Assassin's Creed 3, I heard people griping about the ending and I braced myself for another Mass Effect 3 disappointment but no, the story's ending did make sense and set up the next game well enough. There was a bit of a WTF moment at the very end of the epilogue missions but it ended up being another mini-game, this time earning cheats to use in replays of the game, so I doubt it was meant to be taken seriously.

- Now that I've talked about the game's mechanics for a while, there's something I need to address that further hampered my enjoyment, and that's the bugs. And there are a LOT of them.

This is probably the buggiest game in the entire AC series and despite installing the Day One Patch (and really, having a Day One patch is pretty telling in itself) the game crashed on me several times, the sound skipped in cut scenes and sometimes didn't play either music or voices at all, I actually fell through the floor in a couple of spots and there were a few infuriating moments when a mission simply refused to trigger due to a character or object not being where it was supposed to be and I had to run away from the area and then run back until it triggered or reset, which kinda takes me out of the whole experience. ^_^;

- Horse-riding was a great deal more frustrating than previous AC titles, I was constantly getting caught on scenery in town and in the wilderness, making my horse jiggle like crazy and become unresponsive until I had to leave him behind. Levels that involved racing through the forest became a real chore and I found myself running on foot more and more often, despite taking longer, because it simply wasn't worth the aggravation. I had similar problems with riding horses in Red Dead Redemption but this game took those frustrations to a whole new level.

- So, can I recommend this game? As a rental, probably, but as a buy? No, I really can't. It didn't have much replay value for me and while I did want to see the story through to the end, I didn't want to play anymore when it was over and I don't really care about any future DLC either. There are some bright spots to be sure, the Naval missions alone make it worth a rental and if you find the Revolutionary War period interesting, you'll probably get a big kick out of it and Shaun's snarky descriptions. Overall though, I feel there's simply too much wrong with this game to be something I want to add to my permanent collection.

Sleeping Dogs: Functional Edition PC Review

Okay, I finally got this game to work, with no help whatsoever from United Front or Square-Enix. I downloaded Catalyst 12.11 Beta 4 and now the game works fine. So if you have a ATI 7700 series video card and haven't been able to get the game to work, that may provide a solution but I make no guarantees.

Anyway, now for the review: This game was originally supposed to be the third game in the 'True Crime' series, well known for being a Grand Theft Auto clone, which isn't necessarily a bad thing if done well. The first two games were... okay, IMHO, not terrible but nothing really special. Rental fare at best. Then the third game was dumped by Activision/Blizzard and seemingly dead in the water but it was resurrected by Square Enix and retitled Sleeping Dogs.

As with the previous True Crime games you play a cop, this time undercover cop Wei Shen, who is attempting to infiltrate the Triad Sun On Yee and cripple it from within. This game's plot basically features every cliché from every cop movie ever made, including several Hong Kong movie stables as well. They even blow up a gas station at one point. Not to say the story is bad, just very predictable and well-worn. Perhaps I've been spoiled by Bioware's games where I have more control over the direction of my character and story, but I found myself wishing more than once that I could make different decisions that some of the ones made in this game.

As for Wei Shen himself, he seems to flip-flop between showing hints of genuine complexity only to resort to tired, foul mouthed, angry cop on the edge clichés whenever he meets with his police handler. Don't get me wrong, he's a far more interesting and likeable character than Nick Kang, thank god for that, I just think more could have been done with him and that his internal torment seemed more rehearsed than genuine at times.

The interface of the game was a bit clunky for me, though part of that may be because I used a keyboard/mouse and perhaps it's a little less so with a joystick. Still, there were some aspects of the interface that could've been a bit smoother for my tastes. For example, your phone periodically sends you updates about people you're investigating, and while there's a icon that appears next to 'Reports' when a new one shows up, when you click on it, you have to search carefully through the report to find the newest file because there is no icon in that menu. There are other little annoyances like that that I wish could've been made more user friendly.

This game borrowed a lot from previous games as well, though again a lot of it is implemented well. The combat takes a cue from Rocksteady's excellent Batman games, There's a few action sequences taking cues from a Uncharted game, and so on. To be fair, Sleeping Dogs has a few new tricks of its own and some of them are good in concept but underdeveloped in execution. The whole spot the drug dealer minigame, as Yahtzee already pointed out in his review, is ridiculously easy and could've been so much more interesting. You can also sing karaoke and thankfully, it's not a quicktime event so the interface was comfortable enough that you could sing as well or as badly as you like.

The graphics in this game are very nice indeed, especially the rain effects with the high-res patch. Hong Kong is exaggerated, of course, but that's pretty much the case with any Hollywood medium and it was very pretty to look at. It wasn't as much fun to explore as Stilwater or Liberty City, mind you, but it was still pretty. The music was good too with a surprising amount of Chinese content but I was disappointed there was no custom radio station option, as blazing down the streets of Hong Kong while playing the theme song from 'Police Story' would've made my day. ;P

Finally, it must be said, that the ending credits are one of the most boring credit sequences I've ever seen, to the point where they added a fast forward button and it STILL took me ten minutes to get through them all AND there was no bonus epilogue when it was all said and done. Just sayin'. ^_^;

And now, here's a few things I learned playing this game:

1) A man who has never eaten a pork bun is never a whole man.

2) Killing civilians is perfectly okay unless you're on a mission, in which case you get... DEMERITS!

3) Stopping illegal prostitution is important but engaging in illegal massages is cool, especially if you're a cop.

4) Are your clothes soaked with dirt, blood and possible brain matter? Just take a nap and when you wake up, they'll be crisp and clean again.

Overall, I did have fun with this and enjoyed playing it. It could've been better and more polished but I've definitely played worse. I'm glad I got it for half price though. Assuming there's no bugs on the XBOX 360/PS3 versions I'm unaware of, it's definitely worth a rental.

Widescreen or Bust?

Lately when I've been checking my mail, I keep getting this annoying popup:

"There is a screen resolution problem

Your screen resolution is set below our minimum recommendation of 1024 x 600 pixels. You can continue with your current settings, but the newest version of Mail may not display properly.

Try increasing your screen's resolution (In Windows or Mac OS Help, search for "screen resolution"). If you're using most versions of Windows, here's how:"

And so on. Am I the only one who sets their desktop at 800x600 resolution because it's too small for me to read text comfortably otherwise? Not all of us have the best eyesight, young and old included, and there are people with far worse eyesight than me.

I realize computer monitors sold nowadays are widescreen standard and I plan to keep using my old CRT monitor until it dies, but it still urks me when I'm basically told that my resolution must be wrong as opposed to having it that way for a legitimate reason.

Now Firefox has a plugin option where you can increase the size of the text in your browser so you can adjust it as you like. Of course this does tend to get a bit annoying when you have to do it for EVERY website you visit, hence why I prefer to stay at 800x600 and even then, I still have to adjust it sometimes because half the webpage is missing otherwise.

My big worry is that one day I'll start getting messages that say 'This website CANNOT be displayed at 800x600' and I'll have no choice but to get used to squinting. I'd like to think that not spending years squinting at the computer screen is a major reason why my eyes aren't worse than they are now. But maybe I'm in the minority on this, I dunno...

Sleeping Douches...

I don't know why I'm surprised...

I just bought 'Sleeping Dogs' on Steam for 1/2 price, I should've known there was something wrong with that from the get-go. Ironically, I passed up getting 'Alpha Protocol' for $4.99 because I knew how buggy it was and figured I'd go with the safer, more stable bet with 'Sleeping Dogs'...

What a fucking joke... and it's on me.

I booted up the game, and yes, my system, video card, drivers, etc are all capable of running the game and they're all up to date. Everything was running fine at the menu screen. And then when I started a new game, it just froze and crashed. I tried adjusting the settings for a while, nothing. I tried the game vanilla, nothing. I tried it with the high resolution patch, nothing, freeze and crash, rinse and repeat.

So I looked on Steam and various other forums for help, and to my great dismay, I found that not only was this crashing problem fairly common, it has yet to be fixed TWO MONTHS after the game was released! Despite about six or so patches being released for the game so far.

This is just mind-boggling to me that a company could be that fucking lazy about fixing such a critical bug. I previously complained about Fallout: New Vegas being buggy during release but they FIXED IT within the first couple of weeks and at least that game had the decency to run for a few hours before crashing.

Apparently now I have to check the technical issue forums of every game I ever think about buying beforehand in order make sure it isn't an unplayable pile of shit. And I don't care if the pirated version works, I don't WANT to be a pirate! I paid for the game, I want it to FUCKING WORK! -_-;

Anyway, I'm planning on complaining to Steam tomorrow and hopefully getting a refund or store credit so this wasn't a complete waste of my time and money. I already tried visiting the Square-Enix forum and the best advice they could give me was 'Make sure your disc isn't scratched'. Wow, thanks, Square-Enix. I can hardly wait to see how badly you're going to fuck up Hitman: Absolution now... ^_^;

Mass Effect 3. So close and yet so far...

Normally I would spend a lot of time thinking over what I wanted to say on this subject and fussing over the content, but I'm going to try to simply speak my mind now, warts and all...

Okay, I'll start by saying that I am a huge fan of the first two games in the series and I was looking forward to playing the third and final chapter in this trilogy for months. I had the good fortune of having not played the first two games until last year due to not having a computer powerful enough to run them. (No, I didn't want the console versions)

Thus I was able to experience and enjoy both games and their DLCs all at once. I even went as far as to buy the collector's edition of Mass Effect 3, which I almost NEVER do because I don't generally care about art books and extra crap like that unless I can get it for the same price as the original bare bones game. The Collector's Edition came with DLC and a bunch of other extras, some of which I haven't figured out how to unlock (Wasn't I supposed to get a robot dog or something? Oh well.)

I played Mass Effect 3 over the past week and for the most part, I was really enjoying it. The decisions I had made in previous games more often than not carried over into this one and helped with my war effort to defeat the reapers. There were so many cameos that made me giddy as I recalled them from previous games, which I also replayed recently. There were a few gripes I had with the game while playing, such as the treatment of Rebecca Chambers, the almost completely pointless character of Diane Allers, and a few others but certainly nothing bad enough to ruin the game for me.

Then we reached the ending. Dear god, the ending. Now in three different colors with the same bitter taste! I'm not going to go into specifics but they basically gave us a Gainax ending times three and basically being a Paragon/Renegade meant absolute JACK SHIT when it was all said and done. It made little sense, it was disappointing and just utterly crushed the joy I had experienced playing it until that moment because it just felt unfinished, unsatisfying and just... UGH.

And I'm not the only one who feels this way. This is not one person whining about not getting the endings he wanted. There is currently a series of petitions, polls and campaigns underway for BioWare to release a patch or DLC that fixes the ending of this game. There is a great deal of outrage and hurt from the gaming community that has devoted so much love and time to this series and rightly so.

We know that Bioware has plans to release more DLC for Mass Effect 3 in the future. But if that DLC does nothing to fix the ending, I won't be buying them. I don't care if they flesh out the universe a little more, let us take over Omega with Aria, etc. I won't buy it because ultimately, it won't mean anything if they keep that ending. If Bioware doesn't care anymore, why the hell should I?

Does this mean I will never play a Mass Effect game again? Probably not. If Mass Effect 3's ending isn't fixed, I sure as hell won't be playing THAT game again but I can still get some sense of closure and satisfaction by replaying Mass Effect 1 & 2 and if I have to settle for that, I will. Also, I may be interested in future stores taking place in the Mass Effect universe without Shepard, but I'm definitely going to be more likely to check for any 'Mass Effect 4 ending leaked: It sucks!' type posts before I waste another 60 bucks and 50 hours of my life.

I do have some hope that Mass Effect 3's ending can be fixed. Fallout 3 changed the nonsensical and all too brief ending of their game with DLC when fans complained and while it didn't solve the problem of the lack of epilogues, at least Bethesda made the effort to appease their fans and give the game a more satisfying conclusion. Please make the same effort, Bioware. Please don't let one of the greatest game trilogies I have ever had the pleasure of playing end on such a bitter and hollow note.

But...why?

Look, I know that there's a ton of enmity towards the entire Twilight series. I absolutely understand it, even though I have loved ones whose opinions I trust telling me that the books are completely different than the movies and that I should give them a chance. I may even do that at some point, though I'm not planning to in the short-run.

I watched Breaking Dawn, Part 1 with the Rifftrax commentary over the previous weekend, purchasing the Rifftrax almost as soon as it was posted to the website. As far as a review goes, I enjoyed the Rifftrax to Breaking Dawn more than the Rifftrax for the previous three Twilight-series films. The callbacks that Mike, Kevin, and Bill referred to were good, and this movie had much more pretension to it than the previous three. I believe the pretension, and its overall grandiosity, came as a result of the decision to split the book into two parts... there really is zero subplot in the movie, so each and every plot point needs to be belabored as much as humanly possible, to tease out the storyline from about forty-five minutes of content to an hour and fifty-seven(!) minutes of content. The fact that Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor "Abduction" Lautner chew the majority of the screen throughout the film also tends to lead itself rather easily to riffs. The greatest example of the poor acting quotient is the collection of faces Kristen Stewart makes prior to her onscreen wedding... in the Rifftrax preview, it was ably skewered as a set of constipation faces. I would suggest fans to purchase this Rifftrax, especially if they have already seen movies one through three.

I wanted to dig deeper than this. So, here's the caveat: my challenge with this post is that I want to be respectful to those who like the books, especially since I am sure that many of them also support works and authors (and directors and musicians) that I also enjoy, and immersing yourself in art is always going to be beneficial. So, I'm not trying to bash or trash Stephenie Meyers or her works, just to explain why I am not the biggest fan.


To begin with, bad acting in a movie is going to turn people off from reading the book. The girl portrayed on the screen has very few redeeming qualities... to be truthful, there are two that I can possibly pinpoint... she seems as if she can be intelligent and she seems very dedicated. Of course, I can point to counterexamples of each, namely that it took forever for her to connect Edward --> vampire, and she managed to string along Jacob as a backup plan. From asking my Twilight source, in the books Bella doesn't exactly even have her looks to fall back on. The biggest and most important question I have with this series is, "Why Bella?" What makes her such a fun person to not only want to be around, but to spend large segments of your life with? On top of that, why should I, as the viewer/reader, care? This is a main character that I have zero interest in. It's not to say that books or stories are ruined with a bad main character, but a lot has to go right around the bad main character for the story to be successful. People familiar with MSTings may know the next term; Bella as portrayed on the screen is very close to the classic definition of a Mary Sue character. The only thing that possibly pulls her out of that consideration is that she's not idealized in the beginning. However, throughout the "saga", it is almost as if the author is telling us, "You HAVE to be interested in her because I am!" I may be contrarian half the time (and contrarian to being contrarian the other half), but for me to invest time and intelligence I need a corresponding return of reasons to continue investing. Why should I like her? How can I relate to her? Why should I care about her struggles? Fair warning: without answers, this leads to "So what?"


Another issue I'm nonplussed by is that they took archetypical creatures (vampires and werewolves) and completely changed the rules surrounding them. I daresay that this is just as large an issue as the Mary Sue above. In literature, cliches and stereotypes actually serve a very important role; they provide your reader with context that you don't have to busily backstory (and waste precious page space with overlong explanations) AND they also help to connect your book with the reader... "Hey, vampires, I like them!" Sharing experiences with the author helps to connect the reader.

---Quick aside: experience-sharing and filling cyphers seems to have driven the two most popular book series of the previous decade and a half. Harry Potter was not only having daring adventures, but kids could literally imagine themselves having his adventures. Same with Bella Swan, though to be frank she appeals to half of the population far easier than the other half, and the deliberate under-information as to her character makes it easier for many girls to place themselves in Bella's shoes.

Anyway, to continue the cliche examination, in Twilight, the cliches have been stood on their heads. Vampires can come out at daytime? The only reason they don't is because... they sparkle?! That takes a major limiting factor to a vampire's power and changes it from a handicap or a hurdle that must be overcome into a minor setback. Remember, why would we even care about Bella if not for her struggle, and if you take away reasons to generate struggle and conflict, that's a one-sentence explanation compared to multiple chapters of drama. Here though too, it takes something that could be a strength... a person's familiarity with a cliche, and turns it into something that will put people off. The werewolf rules got even more blurred, when their only limit to their power was having to be in either insanely-huge dog form or tearing their clothes. Full moons don't matter, nor does a werewolf's bite.

This leads into the next point. Previously-established rules are very lightly regarded in this universe. I do not know whether or not it was movie #3 or movie #4 that raised the issue of "imprinting" for werewolves... as if they were tiny ducklings(!), but it was brought to the forefront on Breaking Dawn. Jacob, after never having imprinted on Bella, imprints on the baby that comes out of Bella. They also implied in this movie that imprinting is something that is well-known and integral to a werewolf. Again, "!!!" regarding the busting of cliches above. However, that also puts the plot of movies 2 and 3 into a prism that I cared not to look at... why the holy heck did Jacob even attempt to pursue Bella romantically if he never imprinted on her? He had to know even from a young age about this "peculiarity" of "werewolves", right? Why waste all this energy on someone who not only has a boyfriend but that you also know you didn't immediately take to, and who you know you will have to relegate to a more minimal role when the imprinting happens on another person? (Yeah, yeah, "teenage angst"...) Maybe I'm reading the whole process incorrectly, but that becomes another one of the main issues with the storyline as written... if the writer can't adequately explain what's going on, that's not a failure of the reader. This is not a coded message, this is pretty central to the existence of one of the two mythical creatures the author altered from whole cloth.

Judging from the movies alone, there's very little subplot to engage your brain in other ways. Not all books need it, but it makes a very linear storyline. Subplot generates additional struggle, allows for other characters to take a brief amount of spotlight, and helps to allow tension to build in the main storyline and to give your readers a break from the otherwise unrelenting main characters. I recall one of the movies, don't remember which one, giving Jasper some backstory... and that was pretty much it. Movies are hurt by actors with too much screentime, and I daresay that it works for books too... even the most well-written characters become grating when a reader is stuck with them for too long a stretch.


There is also a sense of urgency and grandiosity that really puts me off of the whole story. I love how the movies breathlessly present Bella's options of "Edward or Jacob?" as if it will change the entire world. I will even grant that it will slightly change Bella's world, as well as Jacob's or Edward's. However, it seems that almost every other character in the whole story is caught up in this dual choice. Why?? Really, seriously, why?? Why should they care or even give it more than an iota of attention? I haven't exactly watched any of the movies repeatedly, so I really can't pick up a legitimate reason that these twenty characters are caught up in the central conceit of the story. The most ironic part is that the movie presents Bella's mother and father as absolute living (well, book-residing) proof that if you don't get your choice of soulmate right in the first try, the world does not end. For those who tell me that this IS the plot and therefore is extremely important, I would then respond by saying "QED."

For fans of the books, I'm sure that I may not have given the story enough of a chance. I may subject myself to the books at a later date, and at that point I can talk more intelligently about where the books' failures (and/or successes) take place, but the reasons above and more that remain unsaid adequately explain why I am unwilling to expend effort reading these books. I hope you understand, Twilight fans, this isn't about your judgment or lack thereof. It's about my inability to connect with a story that changes rules, presents unappealing main characters in situations I can't relate to, and doesn't provide any other more interesting struggles to overcome. No hard feelings?

Postscript: Watching Breaking Dawn, Part 1, then watching The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas the evening afterward, may have informed some of the above rant. I'm sure that it likely states quite a bit about me that I care more about analyzing Breaking Dawn rather than pondering the message contained in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.

A Few Reviews....

Hey everyone,

I was just surfing the net today, bored, and figured it would be a good a time as any to post a couple of mini reviews of games I've been playing of late.

Fallout: New Vegas -- I rented the XBOX 360 version of the game and was honestly shocked by how buggy it was. Fallout 3 had its problems but it very rarely crashed or stuttered in its framerate for me. Still, the story showed promise so I continued on until I reached a point where I guess I did something the game didn't expect and it flatly refused to let me finish a mission and froze.

I took the game back to Rogers for a store credit and was convinced by one of the guys there to try another copy of the game with the 7 day rental limit renewed and if the game still crashed for me, I could still get a store credit when I returned it. So I gave the game another try, it still crashed in that spot and so I decided to restore an earlier save and try a different path. To my surprise, when I actually reached New Vegas, the game actually starting being fun for me (occasional game freeze and frame rate stutter forcing a reset aside...)

The main story was a definite improvement over Fallout 3, you don't need to fight your way through bleak endless subway tunnels over and over this time just to get to your next destination, and thankfully the epilogues that were inexcusably missing from Fallout 3 are back, so you can once again see the consequences of your actions with the various factions and locations you encounter in the game.

The music, at least the default music that came with the game, was pretty lousy and I was pretty much keeping the radio off after the third rendition of 'Johnny Guitar' and 'Texas Red' or whatever the fuck that song was called. (I never thought I'd be pining for 'Butcher Pete'...) I understand getting Elvis songs would've been too expensive but I'd rather have had more 1940s/1950s era pop songs and such.

Anyway, the XBOX 360 version of the game was still a bug riddled mess and I can't recommend it in good conscience. I know they'll come out with patches eventually but I don't use internet on my 360 and even if I did, it still doesn't make me want to buy the game anytime soon. Most likely, now that I (hopefully) have a computer powerful enough to run the game, I'll wait for the PC version to drop in price, all the patches to be released, along with a bunch of cool mods, and buy it later. I'd recommend to anyone interested in this game to do the same.

Star Wars: The Forced Unleashed II -- Ugh. The first game had an interesting story with frustrating controls and a retarded camera. This sequel has a story that was rushed, dumbed down and thoroughly mediocre compared to the first with somewhat better controls and camera but far less epic in scope. I breezed through this game in about six hours or so, and had no interest in replaying on a harder setting or as Guybrush Threepwood, though I can imagine how that final battle would go:

Guybrush: You fight like a dairy farm... URK!!

Darth Vader: How appropriate. You choke like a cow.

Guybrush: *thump*

Darth Vader: All too easy.

Seriously though, this game reminded me a lot of God of War III and that's NOT a compliment. The graphics look pretty, yes, but unlike the first game which had all sorts of interesting enemies and characters, this one pretty much has you fighting the same five or six enemies throughout the entire game. Force powers are fun to use but it gets old after a while and targeting was still annoying at times.

As for the story, without spoiling anything, it seemed to have a point in the beginning but little to nothing was done with it till the very end and that only served to set up another sequel. The few characters that were brought in from the previous game were one-dimensional shells of their former selves. Rahm Kota was just another commander yelling orders in your ear, Vader was a generic video game villain and Juno had about maybe one or two lines tops and about forty seconds of screen time despite being the central motivation for the main character who clutches his head now and then every time he experiences a flashback to the previous game.

So yeah, I'll still enjoy the cutscenes of the first game from time to time but otherwise, I'm done with this series. I'll see if the upcoming 'Old Republic' is a worthy successor to KOTOR *1* or just another overstuffed MMO.

That's it for now, I have to go out shopping and do errands.

Red Dead Revulsion

This game does not deserve a 10.

Hell, I'm not even sure it deserves an 8. This game pissed me off royally and I'm more convinced now than ever that Rockstar Games have forgotten what made their games fun in the first place. Oh, it looks real purty to be sure but the story is diarrhea on a waffle and its endless dialogue brought back some not-so-fond memories of the Metal Gear Solid series. So in short, 'Red Dead Redemption' is pretentious arty CRAP that Hideo Kojima would be proud of.

This might have been tolerable if the gameplay made up for it. Unfortunately, this game shares many of the same problems that plagued 'Grand Theft Auto IV'. The controls continue to be clunky as all fuck and while steering a horse is easier than a car, you can still get hooked up on numerous scenery, fall off narrow paths into the water (which KILLS you again, by the way, no swimming animations for this game) and just getting your horse to turn around can be a real challenge at times.

Speaking of challenge, this game has two levels of it: Auto-Aim On, which makes the game surprisingly easy or Auto-Aim Off, which makes the game needlessly frustrating. It's like using a sniper rifle and removing the scope. You can do it but it's just seems silly to me.

But even if you're the type of gamer who never plays story missions and just wants to be a wild outlaw, robbing, murdering, whoring, etc... the game is extremely rigid on what you can and can't do. You can't hurt certain characters, the game LITERALLY holds the gun back if you try or gives you an instant GAME OVER screen if you get creative, which was rather insulting as they could have simply regenerated the character when you get far enough away which would have been far less aggravating and condescending.

You can hold people up for cash or shoot them and loot their corpses, but it's not nearly as exciting as you might think and gets repetitive fast. Ditto for skinning wild animals, cracking safes and searching closets which always feature the same unskippable animations making these tasks more of a chore than they needed to be.

Also, shooting up a town can be fun for a while but it's not long before you get overwhelmed by sheriffs and you're pretty much fucked unless you use cheats. And speaking of cheats, you can use 'em but only if you don't mind losing the ability to save your game. Yep, you read that right.

And you can forget whoring as well, the game won't let you sleep with hookers to recover health and you won't be getting any girlfriends in this game. This is because the character you're playing, and I'll be getting into more detail about HIM in a minute, is a married man but more importantly, he's a REFORMED outlaw and "I'm not that man anymore" to quote the game. However, Mr. Red Dead Reform can still beat, cut, burn, stab, blow up, lasso, hog-tie, drag behind his horse and, oh yeah, MURDER most of the men, women and even the animals he encounters without any interference from the game but sleeping with hookers is never an option because that would be WRONG. 9_9.

Anyway, back to the story, the lead character has a lot in common with Niko Bellec from 'Grand Theft Auto IV'... in that he's a whiny little bitch that derives even LESS joy with anything he does and for some reason, this has become the template character for Rockstar games of late. This lead character, who was so charismatic that I've already forgotten his name... (quick check on Google, hey Pac Man, cool!)... John Marston is a REFORMED outlaw, blackmailed by government scum that kidnapped his wife and son, to find and kill members of his old gang.

Oh, and did I mention he's REFORMED? Cause he'll remind you about that. A whole lot. He's also a total hypocrite and every character you meet in the game will point that fact out to you, you know, just in case you didn't get the point the first DOZEN times and realize it yourself. Meanwhile, I'm wondering why the fuck I'm playing this.

How the hell are we supposed to get behind a guy that claims to have such noble honorable intentions while destroying countless lives working for vile criminal scum and furthering their ends just to save his family, whom we don't even get to meet until the last 1/4th of the game and when you DO finally meet them, you'll wish you were still in Mexico.

Yes, the last 1/4 of the game is John doing chores with his family. After participating in numerous gun battles with vast armies and riding across the prairies searching for stranger missions (which was about the ONLY thing that kept me playing this game to the end, as they were more interesting than the main story, including one mysterious stranger (I Know You) that I felt really should have been the main villain of the game considering the 'Redemption' theme they were going for) you suddenly find yourself herding cattle, roping horses, and delivering corn, all the while having intimate chats with your family that beat the LIVING CRAP out of your head with ominous foreshadowing.

This is usually the sort of bullshit they put at the BEGINNING of the game to get you familiar with the gameplay mechanics and to give you a reason to care about John's mission but again, his family were all annoying as fuck, so maybe that's why they switched it around. Doesn't make that 1/4 of the game any less BORING though.

Not to mention preachy, and dear lord, is this game ever preachy. I seriously felt like I was being talked down to and sternly lectured all through the game and the whole thing just had this really uncomfortable vibe that turned it from could have been a guilty pleasure to just plain guilt. You can perform evil acts which lowers your honor score but the game seems determined to punish you for this, giving very little in the way of benefits and making it more difficult to purchase items and some people won't talk to you at all if you're a bad enough hombre, FORCING you to do good deeds just to continue playing the damn game. What's the FUCKING point of letting you do evil deeds if there's almost no benefits to doing them and they don't affect the main story in the slightest!?

The whole point of a sandbox game like this, at least for me, is the freedom to be something you're not in real life and do silly, violent or evil things for fun. 'Red Dead Redemption' is less 'Yeah, enjoy robbing the bank and shooting random people! It's all in good fun!" and more "Oh, you're being stupid... *sigh*... When you're ready to GROW UP, continue with the story missions." And that takes ALL the fun out of the game.

And if that weren't enough, the game glitched out on me several times, forcing me to reset the console at one point when I had just finished a mission and the cutscene just froze solid. And I played this on an original disc, new rental with no scratches, in a non-modded system bought in late 2007 that I've never used for internet and I installed the game to a 20 Gig hard drive first. So yeah, I think the game is buggy.

My goodness, I've been ranting for a while, haven't I? In closing, 'Red Dead Redemption' was a huge disappointment for me and was definitely not worth the $10 rental. I honestly had more fun playing 'GUN', short as it was. I'd recommend picking that up used cheap if you're looking for a short but fun western sandbox game. I haven't played 'Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood' yet so maybe I'll give that a try when I get a chance to rent it.

Deepening Winter Doldrums

In March... yeah, I know.

I'm sure that many other people have had these kinds of stretches, but I'm pretty much in the middle of the doldrums right now, mostly because I'm feelin' a lot like Charlie Brown looking at the football.

I won't go into a whole lot of details at present, but suffice it to say that lately, any news I've had has been bad. I've had a close relative pass recently, seen opportunities go without having any power to influence them positively, computer problems, and work has become a quagmire where I'm getting assigned a completely new process that's so unknown that I may or may not be legally liable for mistakes I (or OTHERS) may make, much less dealing with coworkers who seem to want nothing more than to throw me under the bus.

It's been depressing to say the least. The football is right there, but I haven't kicked it in the longest time and at some point, the question starts... is that damn football even kickable?

The worst part is that I have had time off of work recently. Ordinarily, that's a good thing, but it seems like all this time that I've been taking off has helped only minimally. And considering how days off are are a precious resource that is finite, it kind of makes me feel as if I've failed even that.

Failure, especially on a wide-ranging scale, sucks. It certainly humbles a person quite a bit. It's times like this that a vacation seems warranted, but without any money to do so and a winter that doesn't want to end, I can't imagine where the hell to go for it. Anyone got a closet to hide in for about seven days or so? Or some spare optimism to send?

Latest MSTing is still coming along, and work continues. Still no official timeline, but we certainly seem close enough that saying "by the end of March" wouldn't be a stretch of the imagination.

Political Musings for Mid-February:

This is a blog, thankfully, and therefore is a biased collection of opinions and rants from me as well as opinions from my cohort. As such, you get to listen to yet another one of my rants, in which I take an article and pretty much skewer it.

The full article is here


___

February 15, 2008
Obama's Gloomy Big-Government Vision
By Lawrence Kudlow

Senator Barack Obama is very gloomy about America, and he's aligning himself with the liberal wing of the Democratic party in hopes of coming to the nation's rescue. His proposal? Big-government planning, spending, and taxing -- exactly what the nation and the stock market doesn't want to hear.

We don't? By all means, continue.

Obama unveiled much of his economic strategy in Wisconsin this week: He wants to spend $150 billion on a green-energy plan. He wants to establish an infrastructure investment bank to the tune of $60 billion. He wants to expand health insurance by roughly $65 billion. He wants to "reopen" trade deals, which is another way of saying he wants to raise the barriers to free trade. He intends to regulate the profits for drug companies, health insurers, and energy firms. He wants to establish a mortgage-interest tax credit. He wants to double the number of workers receiving the earned-income tax credit (EITC) and triple the EITC benefit for minimum-wage workers.

The Obama spend-o-meter is now up around $800 billion. And tax hikes on the rich won't pay for it. It's the middle class that will ultimately shoulder this fiscal burden in terms of higher taxes and lower growth.

The middle class? I'd love to see the proof behind this, especially when other reputable authors (David Cay Johnston, Perfectly Legal, book, published 2005) tell me that the richest 1% of the country has seen their income rise by 558% since 1970 while the poorest 90% have received a NEGATIVE increase, or otherwise known as a DECREASE, of 0.1% since 1970.

For someone who is trying to decry class warfare here, it sounds an awful lot like you're playing the same game... proof?

This isn't free enterprise. It's old-fashioned-liberal tax, and spend, and regulate. It's plain ol' big government. The only people who will benefit are the central planners in Washington.

Oh, no proof, got it. Just the same generalities you're already decrying Obama for.

Obama would like voters to believe that he's the second coming of JFK. But with his unbelievable spending and new-government-agency proposals he's looking more and more like Jimmy Carter. His is a "Grow the Government Bureaucracy Plan," and it's totally at odds with investment and business.

You'd better believe it! Eight years of Reagan, four of Bush 1, eight of Clinton's pro-business regime, and eight more of Bush 2 have certainly shown the efficacy of free markets in regulating themselves and making sure that people are paid equitably for their work.

Obama says he wants U.S. corporations to stop "shipping jobs overseas" and bring their cash back home. But if he really wanted U.S. companies to keep more of their profits in the states he'd be calling for a reduction in the corporate tax rate. Why isn't he demanding an end to the double-taxation of corporate earnings? It's simple: He wants higher taxes, too.

Compared to the double-taxing of Social Security and income tax on my paltry check? Guess who's more likely to keep the money inside the nation, Einstein.

The Wall Street Journal's Steve Moore has done the math on Obama's tax plan. He says it will add up to a 39.6 percent personal income tax, a 52.2 percent combined income and payroll tax, a 28 percent capital-gains tax, a 39.6 percent dividends tax, and a 55 percent estate tax.

Based on WHAT? This is disingenuous at best. What number are we starting with? $10,000 yearly? $1,000,000 yearly? Big difference between those two numbers.

Besides, I'm fairly sure the Wall Street Journal, a newspaper marketed to high-echelon earners, will attempt to introduce bias into reporting policies that may be designed to cut into the discretionary income of such earners, which may impact their ability to continue to buy... the Wall Street Journal.

(Side note. Dammit, I will come out and tell you, I am biased. It's too bad that media outlets won't.)

Not only is Obama the big-spending candidate, he's also the very-high-tax candidate. And what he wants to tax is capital.

'Cause you can't tax dreams, I'd assume.

Doesn't Obama understand the vital role of capital formation in creating businesses and jobs? Doesn't he understand that without capital, businesses can't expand their operations and hire more workers?

Doesn't Obama understand that without money to pay CEOs more that the American worker can't possibly keep food on the table and buy more from other corporations to keep them in business? Wait up here...

As a serious side-note, why can't reputable economists understand that when the pyramid is too top-heavy, when there is not a base (of taxpayers to keep police and courts, of consumers to keep markets alive) that the earning will come to an end? If Wal*Mart can't sell another Chinese toy, who will get hurt ultimately? Wal*Mart's CEO. Of course, that will be because he and all other CEOs have driven the rest of the American people into subterranean catacombs where their only company is other poor people.

Dan Henninger, writing in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, notes that Obama's is a profoundly pessimistic message. "Strip away the new coat of paint from the Obama message and what you find is not only familiar," writes Henninger. "It's a downer."

Because this country IS in trouble! Can't you see this? Get out of New York, where the wealth of a nation accumulates, and check out the freaking countryside. There's a good fricking reason that they call the Midwest "The Rust Belt", because people decided to STOP INVESTING IN IT. And when GM buys out another 74,000 workers, these people can't buy the fricking Wall Street Journal anymore either. (Though I'm sure Richard Wagoner still buys his WSJ, and the $8.5 base salary he enjoys is certainly based on the number of cars he personally manufactures...)

Obama wants you to believe that America is in trouble, and that it can only be cured with a big lurch to the left. Take from the rich and give to the non-rich. Redistribute income and wealth. It's an age-old recipe for economic disaster. It completely ignores incentives for entrepreneurs, small family-owned businesses, and investors. You can't have capitalism without capital. But Obama would penalize capital, be it capital from corporations or investors. This will only harm, and not advance, opportunities for middle-class workers.

Until of course they utilize government-backed unemployment insurance... which will show them that they need to get back to work. But because companies are too busy trying to outsource and offshore their labor pools, said worker will probably have to go into business for himself. Maybe by taking out a loan from the Small Business Administration, backed by the federal government. And go into business for himself, and prove that it can happen in the U.S. Just a scenario, I'm sure.

And again, note language. The people victimized are "small family-owned businesses" -- like, oh, the Hilton hotels or, maybe, Wal*Mart -- entrepreneurs, and investors. "Investors", by the way, also includes people like George Soros, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Donald Trump... the poor people who will get "hurt" by Obama's policies. Won't you buy The Donald a cheeseburger when he comes to clean your windshield after Obama's elected? It's only the nice thing to do.

Obama believes he can use government, and not free markets, to drive the economy. But on taxes, trade, and regulation, Obama's program is anti-growth. A President Obama would steer us in the social-market direction of Western Europe, which has produced only stagnant economies down through the years. It would be quite an irony.

Hey, moron... should I show you a chart of the growth of the Euro currency compared to the U.S. dollar? These economies are just fine, and they do a far better job of making sure that everyone benefits from the work that is done, rather than just a select few.

By the way, using the government to regulate the free market is a damn good idea. I hope that it happens again in my lifetime.

While newly emerging nations in Eastern Europe and Asia are lowering the tax penalties on capital -- and reaping the economic rewards -- Obama would raise them. Low-rate flat-tax plans are proliferating around the world. Yet Obama completely ignores this. American competitiveness would suffer enormously under Obama, as would job opportunities, productivity, and real wages.

And flat-tax plans are REGRESSIVE. Especially with the way that the loopholes are developed in this nation. Some rich guy can claim depreciation at the same time as claiming income, and the resulting amount he has to pay on is zero because he can afford a lawyer, while the IRS keeps a damn good eye on me because I can't fudge my wage earnings report, especially with my employer reporting this information to them.

There's a reason that tax plans should be progressive. If someone makes $1M a year and gets taxed 50%, that means that they still take home $500,000, which is a livable wage. If I make $30,000 yearly and get taxed 50%, I get $15,000 after tax, barely even enough to make a house payment.

Besides, said millionaire is probably using more services than I am anyway. I'm sure that the millionaire is using the court system to make any challenges others have to his/her weatlh moot, utilizing airport and airplanes far more, (ship-)port facilities and the international waters... the highway system, the police, and generally leaving a far larger imprint on society that requires money to keep going.

Imitate the failures of Germany, Norway, and Sweden? That's no way to run economic policy.

I'd LOVE to imitate the "failures" of any one of those nations right now.

I have so far been soft on Obama this election season. In many respects he is a breath of fresh air. He's an attractive candidate with an appealing approach to politics. Obama is likeable, and sometimes he gets it -- such as when he opposed Hillary Clinton's five-year rate-freeze on mortgages.

But his message is pessimism, not hope. And behind the charm and charisma is a big-government bureaucrat who would take us down the wrong economic road.

Because the road we've been driving down, where companies are allowed to merge and screw their workers (too numerous to count), allowed to misreport numbers and screw their workers (Enron, Tyco, etc), allowed to trade freely with other countries to export jobs from this country and utilize sweatshop labor and screw workers (Nike, Wal*Mart), write nasty open-ended contracts which allow only themselves to set rates at the detriment to all other people (credit-card issuers like Bank of America, Chase, and Discover/Novus), and sell bad loans which threaten people's houses (Countrywide et al), should all be celebrated under the grand and bold heading "the freedom of the market". It's got "Freedom" in it! Celebrate it!!

Dammit, if there was ever an economy which needed to be brought into regulation and conformity, it's ours. It's amazing that big business can try to streamline as much as they want to, which may end up making workers irrevelant as they attempt to squeeze every last ounce of productivity out of the money they invest, but if the people of a country try to streamline their markets as well as the controls and methods that companies use, this is immediately "immoral" and "Communist". That's odd, because the money that I send to the U.S. government is often used on such things as "corporate welfare", which lets companies like Exxon post *billion* dollar profits. Can't I have a say about the productivity of Exxon on my economy and government? I'm investing in it, dammit!

Lawrence Kudlow is a former Reagan economic advisor, a syndicated columnist, and the host of CNBC's Kudlow & Company. Visit his blog, Kudlow's Money Politics.

What a bleeding surprise... he has a reason to be completely biased too, because if rich people don't get to keep their absurdly low 15% capital gains tax, which they routinely GET AROUND ANYWAY, they won't have the time or patience to read a blog from an advisor to what's become a failed economic system.

There's a reason that the 90s did so great. The market hummed along terrifically because money was getting reinvested all over the place. It was, technically, wealth redistribution, with all the Internet startups, and the wealth redistribution allowed American workers to earn more money. Not coincidentally, when the American workers have more money to work with, our country is far better off because happy and productive workers produce more. (What a concept.)

Now? We have wealth concentrating into so few hands that the rest of the country is absolutely hurting.

Hey, Corporate America! The citizens of the US are kind of like stocks... if you INVEST in them, they can give you a BETTER RETURN on your investment! Try it out someday!

Yeah, I'm pissy. This may become a regular feature given time and more outlandish statements from known idiots.

As is, vote Obama. Please. Let's *relearn* the lesson we needed in the 1930s, that when the government lets the markets run free that they usually end up hurting everyone involved.

Corporate Control versus Job Satisfaction.

Today's post examines the overriding need that people have to control and dominate others, just because they can. Of course, this is going to be a pretty minimal issue to most people in the world, but the whole reason I am bringing it up is because it should be a non-issue. Yet, this issue is not, and is one more way that society in America stinks.

I work for nine hours a day (not receiving an "official" lunch period, nor breaktimes) and am salaried. While I do not have a wide swing of hours and usually do not stay late, my schedule and traffic demands that I have to leave at 6:30 and usually do not return until about 18:30, which means I am devoting half of every weekday to either getting to work or working.

To expedite my time at work, I have a small appliance which I use regularly to warm food. This apparatus gets warm, but has safety features which include automatic shutoff and the fact that it does not get above 120 degrees Celsius (not even warm enough to burn paper). I can warm my food while at the same time working, and once the food is warmed I can eat and keep working.

Until today. Today is the day that I find out that I cannot keep appliances at my desk. My manager was so gleeful about this issue, that he sent a message essentially singling me out and included extremely snide statements. I am an adult, and do not need snide statements. I do not need to be singled out. And most of all, it would be nice to think that my company trusts me enough to do what I think is right.

And most of all, it seems almost senseless. Why? Why do you even care what consenting adults are doing in their cubicles? There was no reason in the email, of course. I would not be surprised in the least if management is doing this just because they can. This same manager has shown unacceptance of my preferred arrangement before, which leads me to believe that he is the one who not only reported it to others but has attempted to show that I shouldn't be allowed to do it.

Part of the reason that I bring food to prepare at my cubicle is because I'm not well-off; typically, I can make a lunch for myself for roughly $0.15 per day, especially if I get to keep my appliance. My pay scale, and the payments that others demand from me daily (credit cards and their cheating ways?) pretty much mandate that I either go hungry or find a way to eat super-cheap.

Now, I have to waste time at home, when I spend about three hours awake (not even counting out time preparing for work) compared to the fact that I could be doing the same thing at work.

Not to mention, this is a company that does not even care about the big stuff. We have two tools that we use on a rather consistent basis, both computer network tools. One is an online tracking program in Internet Explorer, and another is a terminal service which connects to many diverse databases. Both work intermittently at best. If there was an issue here at this company, it would be that these programs are costing far more time than worrying about small appliances ever would.

The difference? It costs money. No mention of the fact of how much time is wasted (times the amount that these people get paid), but fixing real problems around here, which is what these guys are paid for, costs more money. Besides, that way you can argue that the workers don't actually do a lot of work and therefore aren't entitled to a raise which even comes close to the cost of inflation -- BigConGlomCoInc. made $3,000,000,000 of profit in 2007, but my raise, a whopping 1.3 percent, didn't even break into the first freaking comma of that rather huge number.

This is petulant whining. You're exactly right. This situation is also symptomatic of what is happening in corporate America, where new ideas are bad, adults are treated as children, and rights are taken away from workers just because management wants to flex their muscles, and workers are pretty much told, "You'd better get on your hands and knees and thank us you have a job."

I sincerely wish that people would just grow up sometimes. This is silly, asinine, and stupid. I freely admit it, and apologize for even taking your time too. My biggest issue here is that there is absolutely no give-and-take, there's just take. I'm really tired of it, especially at BigConGlomCoInc. As written on this blog before, I'm still searching for a job. While things have at least started turning a bit better for me recently, even if I am looking for jobs in the most-repressed place in the United States, I still haven't found the magic combination to get me the hell out.

I know for a fact that this current job will not even be long-term anymore. I am still having the internal debate with myself... do I air the dirty laundry when I leave, or do I try to stay on good terms? Issues like this test my patience to the extreme -- not because they are major issues, but because this is yet another box on the back of the mule. I've never left a job on bad terms before and don't want to start now. On top of that, in other circumstances I would probably be good friends with my manager. But since I'm being treated like this, repeatedly, I really feel that he should know the exact effect all these things has.

Day 158 has passed in the current search-for-a-new-job. I pray on a daily basis that things get better. I don't feel like being around when we have to pay for our own water too.


tl;dr: Corporate America sucks, controls people for the fun of it, and it's because they are run by people who feel the need and the absolute right to control your very lives instead of actually being useful. Coincidentally, put-upon people get tired of it and rant about it on lightly-read blogs.

Eff you, Corporate America.

A new feature for this blog....

which will probably open me up to non-interest, bickering, non-agreeance, and the possible alienation of many (any) fans...

It's time for the 2008 U.S. Presidential election!

Today's installment is actually three miniature rants designed to get a few things off my chest. Nothing more, nothing less... please feel free to contribute to the (lack of) noise if you agree or disagree.

1) Media involvement in elections.

This is really troubling, for many reasons. There have been many debates already presented in this election cycle for the candidates, but I have a couple comments about debates which have already happened.

Firstly, the Nevada debates... why was Dennis Kucinich disinvited? According to NBC, he hadn't received enough support. Well, it seems more and more clear to me that a candidate's visibility *in the press* is what dictates whether or not people will support them. Kucinich was actually invited to this debate to begin with, but NBC pulled the invite at the eleventh hour.

The one fascinating thing I find about our political process is that the support that a candidate could get can certainly influence the remaining candidates into accepting planks of their platform. Unfortunately, the way that the media is now increasingly shutting out other voices and only broadcasting one or two. I cannot quite tell if this is a cost-cutting decision, a matter of laziness, or if these mass-media outlets are deliberately trying to control the message, but it is reprehensible in all three cases considering the public is supposed to be served by these companies.

John Edwards is now running into the same issue. The Democrats do seem to have similar messages, and if Edwards had a different message that was head-and-shoulders above the other candidates, he may have a better chance to get more media time. On the other hand, it seems rather apparent that the media is following Obama and the Clintons and shutting Edwards out, despite the simliarity of all of their messages. It's a mighty shame... clearly, this man is still garnering some support, and he should still be able to broadcast his message. But because the media has decided he is not the story anymore, they've refused to cover him as extensively.

I can hear the conservatives now... "No, their job is to make money!" You're entitled to that opinion, but the FCC has also charged the media with informing the public as well... this is why they are allowed to use the public airwaves. Maybe additional, and better, coverage would be in the media's best interests too, as only through multiple voices can this country be governed best?

And don't worry, Republicans, I didn't forget you too. I remember reading in the Detroit Free Press that the editorial staff has endorsed a candidate... John McCain. That's fine, I suppose, but I wonder... does anyone else see this as a rather egregious conflict of interest? I understand that the editorial page is supposed to be separate from the news page and that the editorial page is the only place where opinions can be printed. On the other hand, if the editors are specifically backing one candidate, does that mean that the rest of the paper skews in that direction too? Would it not be better to say, "Editor Smith, from Times Tribune, endorses John McCain" so as to not encompass the whole paper with an opinion?

An unbiased and diligent media is desperately needed in this country, especially after eight years of Bush (and I could even make the argument to add eight years of Clinton plus another four of Bush I.) Unfortunately, we don't seem to have one. Check out this link to read in Kucinich's own words about his exclusion from the Nevada debates. You may scoff at some of his ideas and think that he's talking of conspiracies, but I at least feel that there is some conflict of interest going on.

Which brings us to the next point.

2) Money in Politics.

There's way too much of it. It seems that the only way that candidates get on the air is to buy time, costing a lot of money, or by accepting money from media companies and thereby becoming compromised with regards to their future actions (such as to the FCC). I know that this has been said before, but I sincerely believe that the presidential campaign (and for that matter, many other federal campaigns down to representative) should be run on a public money trust basis.

The FCC has chartered networks and broadcast television as well as radio, and is a ready governor to provide equal time to candidates. The candidates themselves should have an equal opportunity to speak their message, instead of having thousands of dollars drown out others' voices. There are extremely smart people in this world who don't have the money or access to have their words broadcast. While the Internet certainly has changed communications (for the better), this is still an old-fashioned process with regards to media and it will be for a long time to come.

Abuses with money lead me to point 3.

3) Falsehoods and Intentional Misleading.

Dammit, it's "LYING". I hate politicians for bringing the above two words into our lexicon. I rant on one specific cause, but every last candidate seems to be guilty of this.

A radio ad was released in South Carolina prior to the Democratic primary. In this ad, Barack Obama had a quote taken completely out of context and spun to say the absolute opposite of his meaning. I do not subscribe to the thought that all people are morons who readily believe the first thing that they hear, but spreading disinformation is also difficult to overcome.

A personal story; recently, while at a company function, I was taking the last donut from the box and searching for a plate to put it on. Immediately, I was jumped on by a coworker who accused me of being the person who kept leaving empty boxes around the lunchroom. It was as far from the truth as possible; I do try to keep public areas clean, especially in that situation. But because the conclusion was jumped to and the initial falsehood spread, and since it was the first message that other coworkers heard, I was labeled unfairly and had no opportunity to defend myself.

Of course, there is an opposite effect of having blatantly untrue allegations be a detriment... if people saw me as I cleaned the lunchroom, they wouldn't believe what my coworker said and would have thought (rightly so) that she was jumping to conclusions. In this day and age though, when no politician seems to be held accountable for all the campaign statements produced from their headquarters, there is very little risk to having untrue allegations boomerang back to you, and the attack ad still runs strong due to this idiocy. And unfortunately, in the court of public opinion, it is often either the loudest or the first voice which is believed rather than the true voice.

The greater point is this: the American people have been living on a steady diet of lies and falsehoods from the Bush administration. Can we please have a press which challenges our public figures to explain themselves and holds them accountable when this stuff happens instead of just blowing it off? I don't really care if a President decides that they have been looking at the wrong side of an issue one day; people grow and change, and the world at large changes too. But if they cannot have the integrity to make sure that the things they say are true, then I feel very badly for our political process.

I really don't know why I expect anything to change, but on the other hand I don't believe any ever has changed unless someone takes action or at least says something. Cynicism has its place... the front page of this blog's hosting, for instance.... but it took one voice to point out that the emperor had no clothes too.

In other news, Megane and I are in process of working on another MSTing. Hope you guys liked the last one and that you'll like the next!