Definitely not there yet. And I'm a bit scared by what I've been reading recently about the game AI. Apparently the sim car pathfinding may be no more complex than "take shortest distance route," with no regard to street sizes or existing traffic.

Yeah, based on videos like this one (LINK), the pathfinding is shamefully broken.  How can a game centered on the value of civil infrastructure ship with an AI that completely disregards congestion?

The new patch notes include a note about optimizing traffic for complex road sections.  Does anyone know if fixes issues like this?

-Autistic Angel

I don't remember the exact condition of my character, but he can't sit idle for another two hours with all these crises breaking out around the city.

His vote is to hope Ryla and her apprentices can handle whatever's happening at the Southgate, assume the people of Scaleport are sensible enough to stay inside and lock their doors against the prowling barghests, and go try to stop the iron statue at the Northgate.  It's the most definable, immediate threat to the city and its defenses.

-Autistic Angel

Like the President finally giving the republican leadership more than 7 minutes of his time?  

He stopped his dog and pony show after his approval rating plummeted even more.

He still isn't serious about making the across the board cuts necessary to get us out of this mess either.

In a new budget proposal released earlier this week, House Republicans made sure to deny the community advocacy group ACORN access to federal funding of any kind.  This should be an easy provision to satisfy considering ACORN ceased to exist in March of 2010.  Link:

A new short-term budget bill introduced on Monday by House Republicans includes a bizarre provision banning federal funding to anti-poverty group ACORN, despite the fact that the group has already been stripped of federal funding -- and has been defunct for nearly three years.

ACORN leaders announced that the group was disbanding in March 2010, after Congress cut off all federal funding to the organization. The provision in the current GOP budget bill [PDF], buried on page 221 of 269, would duplicate legislation that has already passed, to target an organization that does not exist.

Even if it were true that President Obama has been refusing to meet with Republican leadership -- and, of course, it isn't -- how would you like him to spend the time?  Introducing the caucus to basic facts by reading newspaper articles aloud?

-Autistic Angel

Additionally, the Washington post article is discussing one republican strategists opinion on the collapse of the debt talks and I hardly think that does anything to further your point.

Perhaps a couple elected officials, then.  Here's an excerpt from Ezra Klein's preceding article:

On Thursday, I attended a background briefing with one of the most respected Republicans in Congress. The rules on these gatherings is you can’t name those involved, but you can quote them. That gives the lawmaker room to be a bit more honest without fear of immediate public reprisal. The discussion was frank and, in a way, encouraging — it suggested that some of the gridlock in Washington is simply the result of poor information.

Would it matter, one reporter asked the veteran legislator, if the president were to put chained-CPI — a policy that reconfigures the way the government measures inflation and thus slows the growth of Social Security benefits — on the table?

“Absolutely,” the legislator said. “That’s serious.”

Another reporter jumped in. “But it is on the table! They tell us three times a day that they want to do chained-CPI.”

“Who wants to do it?” said the legislator.

“The president,” replied the reporter.

“I’d love to see it,” laughed the legislator.

You can see it. If you go to WhiteHouse.gov, the first thing you’ll see is an invitation to read the president’s plan to replace the sequester. That plan is only a page. “Savings from Superlative CPI” — another way of saying chained-CPI (consumer price index) — is one of the items in bold type.

And here's an NBC report coming out of President Obama's sit-down dinner with a group of Republican senators:

As for Obama’s dinner last night, it went very well, according to various NBC conversations with the GOP participants. It was serious. It was respectful. And it was informative. (In fact, one senator told us that he learned, for the first time, the actual cuts that the president has put on the table. Leadership hadn’t shared that list with them before)

You know what the first step is to convincing people that you're serious about solving big problems?  Caring enough to occasionally glance at what those problems actually are.

-Autistic Angel

Anyone in the house/senate or administration that isn't in favor of across the board spending cuts (including completely eliminating the rampant waste) should be immediately fired.

Gratch, point taken regarding the very real cost of this debacle.  I felt the administration's strategy to over dramatize the impact of the sequester to be nothing more than an attempt to divert attention in leu of going to work on actually working with the house to come up with a real debt reduction plan and eliminate this kicking the can down the road bullshit that both sides are equally guilty of.

Uh-huh.

Here's a recent article by Ezra Klein documenting, tweet by tweet, how negotiations on the sequester have been going.

So let’s back up. [Republican strategist Mike] Murphy’s initial view was that to unlock GOP votes for a budget deal, Obama just needed to endorse chained CPI and more means-testing in Medicare. Then it was pointed out that Obama has endorsed means-testing in Medicare, so Murphy wondered why he didn’t endorse chained CPI as part of a deal. Then it was pointed out that Obama did endorse chained CPI, at which point Murphy called chained CPI “a gimmick,” and said Obama had to endorse raising the Medicare age, drop his demands for more revenue as part of a deal and earn back the GOP’s trust.

Short version: Republicans are making public demands about what it'll take to reach a budget deal, then when it's pointed out their demands are already part of the White House's proposal, they wave it off and move the goalposts farther back.

And it's all happening while Conservatives simultaneously try to argue that President Obama is just fearmongering about no big deal:

The most ironic thing is that the idiotic scare tactics were being used to oppose what his idea to begin with.

...but also a terrible blight for which he should shoulder the blame.

I hate that so many have been impacted by the sequester (Obama's idea from the start).

Aside from the lying, stalling, and shameless double-talking, though, Conservatives are probably really serious about pursuing honorable negotiations for the good of the country.

-Autistic Angel

Amazon has stopped selling the PC Download version. Note the 1-star review average.

Not everyone is up in arms.  Check out this guy's 5-star review!

You'd think I'd be mega unhappy like everyone else at the constant waiting and lack of actually being able to play a game I purchased.

Well, you'd be wrong.

The hours upon hours since launch that I haven't been able to log in, whether it be sitting in queues, or server busy messages, or just plain old not working screens, I've managed to do a heap of things that I never do when I'm locked in my man cave playing video games.

I've washed the dishes, the laundry, changed the oil in the car, mopped the floors, dusted, did a spot of gardening, greeted my children who I hadn't really seen since Christmas, walked the dog, asked how my wife's day has been and listened to the entire response, restocked the groceries and many more things! My family has never been happier that they've got a father and husband again.

In fact, I feel like Simcity has given me a new lease on life. This wouldn't have been possible without the seemingly crazy decision to have constant online connections and server side save points even for single player.

So I can only thank EA and Maxis. Your failures have been my rewards. 5 stars!

-Autistic Angel

Maybe it's rose colored glasses, but were politics like this when we were all young?  It just seems like politicians lately have taken to even more childish behavior than ever before.  Folding their arms and refusing to play, playing the silent game, or just not even showing up is all somehow acceptable behavior.  Mystery abounds....

Be careful.  Any attempt to portray Obama and Democrats as anything but perfect apparently upsets AA.  

One of the challenges with pointing out the truly detestable behavior of the Conservative movement is that people tend to assume it means you're just blindly toeing the Democratic line.  In fact, I am extremely troubled by President Obama's secret drone war, his administration's lack of commitment towards improving the unconscionable backlog for veteran assistance, continued opposition towards medical marijuana, and more.  I would gladly take the opportunity to vote for someone more in line with my views on those issues.

But Barack Obama did not face a primary challenge in 2012.  The only credible alternative to four more years of his leadership was Mitt Romney who openly campaigned on a plan to make every them all worse and overturn as many of his successes as possible.  Don't like secret drone wars?  How about re-suspending habeas corpus and reinstituting the torture program?  Prescription marijuana for treating glaucoma and chemotherapy sickness?  Don't worry: Romney has Strong Core Principles against that, the Affordable Healthcare Act measures that would make other treatments affordable, and what the hell: against gay marriage too!


My point here and in other threads is this: since winning control of the House in 2010, congressional Republicans have precipitated five national economic crises in attempts to get their way.  Two threatened government shutdowns, the debt ceiling, the fiscal cliff, now sequestration, and at least two more are on the immediate horizon.  Their demands have been the same every time: radical, across-the-board spending cuts, particularly in Social Security and Medicare, without one single dollar of revenue increase in the mix.  It's a proposal they can't win elections on, so by God, they're going to use what little power they have to gridlock Washington and foment the idea the that whole system has broken down.

Republicans control one piece of the legislative branch, yet they demand the senate and president institute their policies as though they were elected to run the whole thing.  The only way the "Both Sides Do It" defense applies is if you believe they're correct and the preceding 235 years of American history have been wrong.

-Autistic Angel

[Tenchu Z]

I've had an itch for some stealthy ninja action lately.  Since none of the previous Tenchu games are available through PSN as "classics" ( ), I grabbed Tenchu Z on 360.  I know it got panned, but I think it's actually kinda fun.  Just depends on how you play it and how forgiving you can be of some truly awful AI.
 

Gratch, have you played Mark of the Ninja yet?  That's supposed to be packed with stealthy ninja action, and everyone I know who's tried it has fallen completely in love.

-Autistic Angel

I did, thought it was pretty fun.  Got a corrupted save game about halfway through and didn't feel like playing it all over again. 

Hmmm...so we need a stealth action game that's good, but also relatively short so you can review Etrian Odyssey IV before Monster Hunter 3: Ultimate comes out....

I'd ask if you've played Dishonored, but I think we both know how that would go.  Specifically, you'd say that you played it back in November and really liked it, then I would spend two minutes doing the forum search I should have done in the first place, read all your posts about it, and agree with you that it was very good.  So we'll skip that and act like this paragraph isn't here.

How do you feel about the modern Splinter Cell games?  Double Agent and Conviction can be had for a song.  You could even play co-op missions with Mrs. Gratch and earn a +5% Steely Determination bonus for the Cabbage Gratch Kids!

-Autistic Angel

[Tenchu Z]

I've had an itch for some stealthy ninja action lately.  Since none of the previous Tenchu games are available through PSN as "classics" ( ), I grabbed Tenchu Z on 360.  I know it got panned, but I think it's actually kinda fun.  Just depends on how you play it and how forgiving you can be of some truly awful AI.
 

Gratch, have you played Mark of the Ninja yet?  That's supposed to be packed with stealthy ninja action, and everyone I know who's tried it has fallen completely in love.

-Autistic Angel

You know, we're all gamers.  Let's settle this in a friendly new forum game I like to call "Equal Blame."

Equal Blame is a forum game in which 2 - 8 players must come to a unanimous decision on what to order on their pizza.  All players are free to negotiate their preferences in any way they see fit, starting with what toppings they'd most like, then which ones they'd accept, and even what they'd be willing to scrape off and throw in the trash if means they can still eat the dough.

The exception to the above rules is that one player is designated at the start of the game as the House Republican Caucus.  The rules for this player are very simple: no matter what agreement the other players come to, no matter what they offer in exchange for cooperation, the House Republican Caucus objects to the fundamental principle of pizza and must always vote against ordering the pizza at all.

The game continues until any player quits, at which point all players must write a 500-word essay accepting equal blame for their inability to produce a pizza consensus.  Again, the only exception is the House Republican Caucus who's job it is to *assign* blame to everyone else by pretending that a consensus could have been reached at any time if the other players had just capitulated a little harder.

Gary Johnson weighs in:

Gary Johnson conveniently ignores the fact that these sweeping spending cuts are taking effect in the midst of an ongoing economic recovery.  As Gratch has pointed out in his own real-world situation, so-called "austerity measures" mean cancelled contracts and lost jobs.  We also know what happens when governments try to cut and shrink their way out of a recession: Europe's languishing recovery makes the United States' look downright booming by comparison.

Gary Johnson then goes on to explain what he wants to do to solve the problem: cut back on Social Security and Medicare benefits for poor, old, sick people.  By delaying, diminishing, and taking away programs that people have paid into their whole lives, we'll be able to stimulate the economy by forcing people to work futher into old age, burden their employers' insurance plans with increasingly expensive maladies, and free up fewer jobs for the younger generation.  And all without eliminating a single massive tax subsidy for multi-billion dollar oil companies or off-shore tax avoidance racket!

Is he still pushing for that 20%+ nationwide sales tax?

-Autistic Angel

BOTH parties are equally to blame for this crap.

The sequester exists because, in 2011, the newly elected Tea Party caucus announced they were not going to raise the debt ceiling.  If it is the case that "Both Sides Do It," I would like someone to show me the Democratic equivalent to declaring the American dollar valueless and collapsing the global economy.

Sequestration was the ransom demanded by House Republicans to back down.  It was a good deal: if they would agree to *temporarily* stop hurting the United States' credit rating, costing the country billions of dollars in additional interest payments, and causing the stock market to plummet hundreds of points with their sociopathic brinksmanship, Democrats would agree to a series of very stupid automatic spending cuts that Republicans could run against in the 2012 presidential election.  And if you look at all the times Mitt Romney complained about "Barack Obama's plan" to "slash hundreds of millions from Defense," you'll see that's exactly what they did.

It didn't work.  Now, since the election, President Obama has offered House Republicans a budget deal that favors spending cuts over revenue increases by 2:1, and the revenue included is mostly arrived at by closing all the tax loopholes Republicans *claimed* they wanted to fix during the presidential campaign.  The deal is so good, so filled with all the things Conservatives say they've always wanted and can't reasonably object to, that their public response so far has been to pretend the deal doesn't exist, giving press conferences complaining that the White House won't put any plan at all.

If both sides are equally at fault here, why is one side rotating through a steady cycle of claiming the sequester is no big deal; it is a big deal but it's a good thing; it's not a good thing and it was all Barack Obama's idea; the President won't listen to our ideas; and we refuse to present any specific ideas because it's his mess and he should clean it up?  When negotiations break down and one side comes out spewing openly contradictory lies about what's going on, why are we to assume the other side is somehow equally at fault?

-Autistic Angel

I'm pinched for time just now, but I wanted to confirm that I'll definitely be there this Wednesday!

[Spoiler]

So, this game is pretty addicting!  I've been playing the story missions, plus all the side quests and random encounters that appear, in an effort to keep everyone leveling up and improving their support bonuses.  The relationship dialogue is a reward unto itself.   There've been a few beats in the main story where proceeding directly into one of the sillier conversations seemed especially out of place, but that can't be helped in a game that let's advance the side stories at your own pace.

I used the one Second Seal I found to dual-class Chrom into a Cavalier, and because he retains all of his stat increases when resetting to level 1, he's swiftly growing into a god on the battlefield.  It's a good strategy, considering that he's one of the few absolutely indispensible characters.  He's also gotten married to

Spoiler for Hiden:

Sumia.  I'm playing without any sort of guide so I have no idea if she's the ideal pick, but hey, who doesn't root for the sweet girl who occasionally flips upside down and rams her face into the ground while walking?

I'm also weirdly obsessed with Donnel, the pot-helmeted villager who can't take a punch without needing divine healing.  I've played enough of the previous Fire Emblem games to believe a character this lame wouldn't be included unless he secretly became a mecha-dragon lasersword badass at some point, so I'm working him up basically to see what happens.

Around Chapter 11 - 12 in the story so far -- feels like one of the best 3DS exclusives so far!

-Autistic Angel

A technical question: How did he drown out the pink? Did he just ink over the words in black? Would he have to hit all the same exact ink...holes to do it? Or is it just not that hard and I'm over thinking it?

Black is good cover-all for unwanted color.  I don't think it requires any greater precision than a standard fill -- magnum needle arrays can cover areas evenly enough that a light color like pink wouldn't stand a chance.

-Autistic Angel

When Gratch's twins are born, we'll probably need someone to help deconstruct every game in which health is measured with hit points.  And I know you play a lot of the same sort of games.

Let's see how comfortable you are with rating things on the Game Relative Aggravation and Tedious Complexity Hierarchy, or G.R.A.T.C.H.  Please score the following games on how poorly they measure up to Final Fantasy: The War of the Lions.

- Bioshock
- Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
- Frozen Synapse
- Jillian Michaels' Fitness Ultimatum 2010
- NBA Street Showdown

Feel free to use the standard 1 - 14 scale, where a score of 1 is equivalent to Solatorobo: Red the Hunter, 7 equals El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, and 14 is Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon.

-Autistic Angel

Shit just got fake. They are reducing the budget for agencies that no longer exist.

Oh, this is an interesting one!  I think Moliere has provided us a rare example of a Conservative being wrong, but *not* actively dishonest.  I can't prove that, of course, but it seems like Mike Riggs might be simply ignorant and lazy.

The ignorance is about the circumstances under which the National Drug Intelligence Center was shut down.  Republicans had been trying to shut down the NDIC since 1995 when George Bush Sr. first declared its purpose redundant and proposed rolling its responsibilities into other government agencies.  Unfortunately for the rest of the party, the Pennsylvania-based agency had a powerful advocate in Jack Murtha who fought Republicans and Democrats alike to keep the agency open literally until the day he died: February 8th, 2010.

In November 2010, Republicans won control of the House of Representatives.  They arrived with an extremely vocal number of Tea Party members who had been elected on promises of dissolving as much of the federal government as they could.  Democrats, still operating under the belief that Republican were open to reason and compromise, started by directing attention to federal agencies they agreed could be consolidated into other agencies.  

The resulting decision was that the NDIC would be closed in 2012, and that $20-million of federal funds would be earmarked for its closure, the reassignment of its responsibilities to other agencies (primarily the Drug Enforcement Agency), and related costs.  Those funds would be paid out through fiscal year 2012 and 2013, and naturally would appear on the federal budget under "National Drug Intelligence Center".

Now we come to the sequestration deal which threatens to slash funding from a wide swath of existing projects.  Among them, the $20 million slated to cover the closure of the NDIC -- money which likely would have been funneled into the DEA to begin taking up some of their new responsibilities, such as issuing yearly reports on the economic and security impact of Mexican drug cartels.  See, here's a fun fact: when the NDIC closed in July 2012, it happened to be at the height of the Conservative's trumped up "Fast and Furious" scandal, so despite sixteen years of publicly trying to shut the center down, they immediately started pretending it was part of some shadowy coverup.


In other words, the author of Moliere's article probably wasn't lying when he pointed out some of the cuts are coming from agencies that don't exist -- he just doesn't know anything about how government works, how the federal budget is laid out, the scope and complexity of a federal agency's responsibilities, or any specifics of the budget negotiations in 2011.  I can believe that.  Who wants to research facts when you can slap a shocking expose together in fifteen minutes and watch it get parroted by every right-wing rag on the internet?


Oh, and the part where Mike Riggs is super lazy?  See this part where he snarkily "corrects" the OMB's math?

The first line item on page 121 of the OMB's September 2012 report says that under sequestration the National Drug Intelligence Center would lose $2 million of its $20 million budget. While that's slightly more than 8.2 percent (rounding error or scare tactic?)....

All the numbers on the OMB's report are rounded to the nearest whole.  8.2% of 20 is 1.64 which rounds up to 2, just as 8.2% of the ATF's budget is 94.464 which rounds down to 94.  

That's not a rounding error...it's just rounding.

-Autistic Angel

so has it been said yet what his actions were prior to last week?

nothing to do with his Aliens: Colonial Marines review and is actually related to actions that took place prior to last week.

Not that I know of.  EGM seems content to leave the story there and Brandon Justice's aptly chosen Twitter handle "@jokeontheworld" has gone effectively dark since the firing.  As skystride pointed out upthread though, this was not the first high-profile WTF article to appear under his byline.  The XCOM reboot is a real-time strategy game?  What is the maximum number of seconds an idly curious person could investigate that game before realizing that isn't true?

Can you imagine being the executive editor of a magazine, making your living in a job where you get to choose whatever games you want to cover and assign the rest out to your staff, and fucking it up this badly?  A job is a job -- there's deadlines and stress and general tedium -- but this guy doesn't demonstrate even the most basic skills of his profession.

-Autistic Angel

If you need more proof that Tom Chick sucks as a game review, he gave A:CM the same score he gave Halo 4.  

 

Tom Chick is just a controversy whore. He knows he'll get clicks if he just says something that is contrarian. As such, I won't bother clicking on links involving him, and thank you for not including a link.

On a related note, Tom Chick never did a review of War Z that I know of, but he did dedicate an entire segment of his podcast to defending the "game's" fraudulent advertising and pile of missing features.  None of the whiners were *really* upset about only having one map, or the map being deceptively small, or the limited player cap, or the missing skill trees, or the non-functional economy -- they were just bringing that stuff up to have something to grouse about.

Then there's his...review? of Dragon's Dogma.  I know this looks like I've just purged random text from the clipboard, but this really is a representative sample:

We really like what you’ve done, but, well, there are some issues. Have you met Jared? He’s our usability tester. Jared, how many times have you played Dragon Age?

Three times, all the way through. And Dragon Age II two times.

What level are you in Star Wars Old Republic?

I have a level 50 consular, a level 50 sith warrior, and a level 42 agent.

What did you think of the ending of Mass Effect 3?

I hated it. You should change it.

Good boy, Jared. See, this kid knows all the angles. Jared, you also play that other MMO, don’t you?

World of Warcraft, yes.

All right, all right, there’s no need to actually say the name.

I also play all the Elder Scrolls games, and the Final Fantasy games, and the Divine Divinity games, and Xenoblade Chronicles. Especially Xenoblade Chronicles.

All right, Jared, this is a development meeting, not a sales pitch.

But not Demon’s Souls or Dark Souls.

It goes on like that, the whole thing.  The premise is about what three people might say about Dragon's Dogma if it had been published by EA.  Since none of those people exist and the game was not published by EA, you could legitimately finish Tom's review knowing less about the game than when you started.  It's really something.

I think Tom Chick still produces some of the most exacting strategy game reviews around, but the longer he goes without a professional editor to manicure his ideas, the wilder and more overgrown they seem to become.

-Autistic Angel

For some reason EGM gave it a 90 and called it "a big event for the genre" or something. Next highest review is in the 60s. Can you say payoff?

No kidding. That entire review reads like an Amazon.com product placing with no actual meat in it in the slightest. Go read the comments (before they all get removed) for a few good laughs.

Next highest score (at least for the moment) to that is a 65/100, which includes Ron's review. Which frankly seems like a much more accurate score if you were a fan of the Aliens series.

Brandon Justice thinks X-Com is a RTS - http://www.egmnow.com/articles/playstation_3/e3-2012-the-big-question-xcom-enemy-unknown/

This guy is the executive editor of EGM?

Not any more.

Some of you may have heard that Brandon Justice is no longer with EGM. This is true. But before speculation once again overwhelms fact, let me state that his departure has absolutely nothing to do with his Aliens: Colonial Marines review and is actually related to actions that took place prior to last week. Brandon is free to share these reasons if he so chooses. I want to thank Brandon for his service during his tenure with EGM and wish him the very best in his next endeavor. We will be announcing EGM’s new executive editor in the days ahead.

I hope it's me.  I spent all week collecting boxtops.

-Autistic Angel

Chrom seems remarkably stupid sometimes.

"I'm afraid I cannot help you, Chrom.  I am only the East Kahn - the West Kahn commands our troops at present."

"Nrg!  Then all is lost!"

"But wait!  The tournament is nigh and if you help lend me your prowess in battle, I will pledge you as many troops as you need."

"Urk!  What?"

"Help me win the tournament and I will hold dominion over our armies.  In gratitude, I will aid your cause!"

"Ack!   Come again?"

"Listen, try to stay with me here: the West Kahn commands the troops right now.  If you win this one battle, the power will shift into my hands and I'll do as you ask."

"Hrg!  I'm not following."

"..."

"Hold, milady...Ehg!  Some vermillion-coloured troops hath ventured upon the battlefield ahead.  TO ARMS, MEN!"

-Autistic Angel

btw, Kotaku gave this a "no buy" recommendation.  too many bugs, inconsistent gameplay, and a step down from #2. 

A step down from 2?  What does it do, make your character reenact the Beevis and Butthead laugh every time you kill something?

I have never been more bored by fighting aliens with a nano-enhanced supersuit than when I was in Crysis 2.

-Autistic Angel

I'll be amazed if this game couldn't be had for $30 within the next next four weeks.  That isn't a commentary on the quality of the game, but with an average completion time of about 4-5 hours, Revengeance seems like the ideal game for near-immediate GameStop trade-ins and GameFly rentals.  Retailers who stocked up on the promise of flashy trailers and a big name franchise are going to be slashing their prices pretty early, I bet.

-Autistic Angel

But aside from the fact that I spent years arguing in favor of finishing the job in Afghanistan and voted for Barack Obama's explicit promise to do exactly that, yeah, ATB's exhaustively reasoned article really nails my hypocrisy for not being angrier about it.

I saw absolutely no evidence of reason or critical thinking being used to create that article. It's almost as if it were made for a Junior High crowd.

Oh, it's perfectly idiotic.  If my sarcasm was unclear, this is nothing but some Conservative with an axe to grind and zero understanding of the policies he's attacking tossing out facile assertions without any regard for the facts.  Now liberals are supposed to run themselves ragged disproving these "arguments" while Conservatives shrug it all off on their way to embrace the next conspiracy theory.

Or, as ATB said:

...the article pretty much sums up this board too.

-Autistic Angel

Looks like today is the first day we're back up and running, though my connection still seems a little unsteady.  It had better be 100% again by our next game!

-Autistic Angel

Don't forget Best Buy has this for $10-off this week: $30 for the PS4 & Vita version or $20 for the Vita version alone.

-Autistic Angel

Hey everyone, I'm afraid I can't make it tonight.  Winter storm Nero basically suffocated our state over the last six says, and my ISP is one of the parts still waiting for resuscitation.  We get an IP address, but the connection is so spotty and the bandwidth so low that even this post is going up via aircard.

Sorry for the late notice -- I kept hoping it'd get fixed.  Sock the legate good for me!

The author's name is still there on my screen, just above the social media sharing buttons.

Oh, weird: I just hit Refresh and it popped up.  It really just said "By...." before.

This reminds me of the 9.2 IGN gave Master of Orion 3.  Of course, the difference is that MOO3 was a 4X strategy game whose miserable design failings could masquerade as sophistication.  It was an incomprehensible mess, but if you didn't want to seem dumb you might pretend to really love it.

This is a *shooter.*  The basic elements of being a shooter don't work.  It's only a few hours long.  Seriously, now: how could a reviewer possibly miss the mark this badly?

-Autistic Angel

Did they delete the byline on the EGM review or was the author's name omitted from the start?

-Autistic Angel

[If the U.S. had devoted itself 100% towards securing Afghanistan rather than redirecting such a huge percentage of its military towards the Iraq War, it seems very likely to me that the situation there would be vastly improved over its current state.]

1. Democrats fought George W. Bush’s troop surge in Iraq in 2006.

Obama copied it in Afghanistan in 2009.

Well, let's check the record.  Here's what I was saying about it in 2007:

I think that's BS. What kind of fight would it have been? Who would have invested in it with the US? Just because almost 3000 people from the US died doesn't mean the world was unified. Even when 200,000 died after the tsunami, the corruption and stupidity of the world was on the ground to stop help within days. 9/11 was no different.

Following the 9/11 attacks, NATO invoked Article 5 which resolved that this unprovoked attack against the United States would be treated as an attack against every member nation.  This is the primary reason that American troops to this day are serving alongside soldiers from nations like France, Germany, Canada, Norway, the Netherlands, Romania, and Portugal -- all nations which have steered clear of the situtation in Iraq.

The decision to go to war in Afghanistan enjoyed *tremendous* global support in 2001 and 2002 because that nation was inextricably linked to the 9/11 attacks.  However, that support rapidly started to wane once the United States tried to divert that enthusiasm towards invading Iraq.  If the U.S. had devoted itself 100% towards securing Afghanistan rather than redirecting such a huge percentage of its military towards the Iraq War, it seems very likely to me that the situation there would be vastly improved over its current state.

Here's how Barack Obama campaign for president in 2008:

That’s why I strongly stand by my plan to end [the Iraq] war. Now, Prime Minister Maliki’s call for a timetable for the removal of U.S. forces presents a real opportunity. It comes at a time when the American general in charge of training Iraq’s Security Forces has testified that Iraq’s Army and Police will be ready to assume responsibility for Iraq’s security in 2009. Now is the time for a responsible redeployment of our combat troops that pushes Iraq’s leaders toward a political solution, rebuilds our military, and refocuses on Afghanistan and our broader security interests.

But aside from the fact that I spent years arguing in favor of finishing the job in Afghanistan and voted for Barack Obama's explicit promise to do exactly that, yeah, ATB's exhaustively reasoned article really nails my hypocrisy for not being angrier about it.

-Autistic Angel

Apparently, parts of this game are so absurd that Game Informer's video producer literally fell over in his chair laughing.  The whole video is instructive, but skip to about 13:00 for the section on "zombie aliens."

There's also this video of a guy running through an entire level, never firing a shot, while the incredibly deadly xenomorphs claw helplessly at the air, and this singing and dancing edition.

-Autistic Angel

I ended up grabbing a refurb 3DS today.  Thought about the XL, but couldn't really justify the extra $60 it would run for a new one.  I'm never away from a plug in for long, so I'm not overly concerned about battery life.  The bigger screens would be nice, but not absolutely necessary.  Read some reviews on the new FE and liked what I heard.  Sounds like they made it more accessible, which is a very good thing.  Think Ill give it a whirl.

Tried 10 different stores looking for Fire Emblem...it's simply impossible to find right now.  Will just download it once I get to the hotel tonight.

Be aware that the 3DS' "suspend" mode leaves the wireless antenna and footstep counting mechanisms on, so it drains your battery at an amazing rate.  I recommend turning the system completely off when you're carrying it or else you'll have it perpetually connected to a wall socket.

Otherwise, yeah, give Fire Emblem a whirl on Normal difficulty and with Permadeath switched off and see what you think.  With the modern class customization, adjacency bonuses, and relationship building elements, it's grown a lot since the GBA days.  It looks fantastic, too...though the weird doll-sized feet are kind of weird.

-Autistic Angel

Don't have a 3DS.  Also have never been a huge fan of the FE series.  They always felt more like puzzle games than SRPG's to me.

EDIT:  Although, now you've got me thinking.  I have some Christmas money/gift cards I haven't spent yet that would basically get me a 3DS for nothing out of pocket.  I fly out this afternoon and will be gone all week...maybe I ought to go pick up some new entertainment for this trip.  Hmmm...

The 3DS XL is the better pick.  Whatever convenience you lose from the larger form factor will be made up with the longer battery life and bigger screens that will make your original DS games look great at their native resolution.  You could finally play Radiant Historia and have a full report ready by the time Etrian Odyssey IV is out!

-Autistic Angel

What about Fire Emblem: Awakening?  That's more of an RPG than Gravity Rush and easy to pick up and play enroute from one place to another!

-Autistic Angel

To me ultimately the logic boils down to marriage being a legal status with legal rights and priveleges.  Trying to frame it as solely a religious concept breaks down in the fact that non-religious people can also get legally "married".  There is no set standard that I'm aware of to define marriage in a religious context (can atheists get "married"? Buddhists?  Mormons?  Jews?).  Who draws the line?  Does one particular religion's "marriage" have more moral value than everyone else's?  

We keep trying to make these points, but Arclight and ATB shrug off equal rights on things like medical decisions and shared property as "political correctness."

This lifestyle choice strikes me as depraved and unnatural, so even though it does not affect me in any way, I would like to propose that the forum rules immediately be changed to forbid them from making any forum post that includes the letter 'S.'  It makes exactly as much sense as denying gay couples the right to file tax returns as married because of "Scripture!" and, since we know they're both opposed to the political correctness of equal rights, they'll obviously support this change.

In my opinion.

-Autistic Angel

Ugh.

Tsk tsk.  When you come up against someone who disagrees with you it's so easy to label them a homophobe or gay-hater because it plays well and has been working...even though in most cases it's an absolute lie.  It puts them on the defensive and completely makes anything they say suspect.  Great political tactic.

Right, Arclight isn't bigoted against gay couples -- he just supports laws that deny them the same legal rights and protections as heterosexual couples because, in his opinion, they shouldn't be able to share property, insurance, medical decisions, parenting responsibilities, or societal recognition the way *real* couples do.  My, what a terrible burden to have the textbook definition of bigotry called out as bigotry!


First they came for the slave owners, and I reached for my Bible to teach them that slavery was born of a godly and righteous tradition.

Then they came for the misogynists, and I opened my Bible to remind them how Eve was responsible for mankind's eviction from Eden.

Then they came for the segregationists, and I held my Bible high and warned that if God condoned miscegenation, He would not have separated the races on different continents.

Then they came for the homophobes, and I gripped my Bible fervently and begged them to see why biblical prohibitions on same-sex relationships were inviolate, but the ones on eating shellfish or mixing different types of fabrics could be ignored.

At last they came for me, though I was obviously none of those things, and there was no one left to speak for me.  They must have remembered all that I had said.

-Autistic Angel

Guy at Best Buy just told me this was delayed until Spring, which seems odd if people are downloading it.

However, I'm not seeing it available online.

Guy at Best Buy is willfully misinformed.  I just picked my copy up from Best Buy earlier this afternoon and they had no shortage of copies on the shelf.

Shipping delays might account for regional differences, but no, it definitely has not been delayed until spring.

-Autistic Angel

I can see now that I've put myself out there in two threads, and although I never did crack the inner crowd in this forum or Gone Gold. I will be even less taken seriously now.
And that's the risk you take, being honest.

As interesting as it is watching you handwave our comments as so much "political correctness," as though concerns over civil rights and specific legal protections are semantic technicalities, it sounds like you're bummed over the social stigma of your lifestyle.

Now imagine if, instead of an imaginary ostracism where literally nothing happened, every major gaming site on the internet instituted strict limitations on how many articles you were allowed to read and how many posts you were allowed to make.  Not because it made the sites better, or safer, or more relevant, mind you; just because enough people had the opinion that anti-gay marriage folks disrupt the sacred union between gamer and gamepad.

That would be pretty fucking stupid, wouldn't it?

-Autistic Angel

Oh boy: I don't know if the long silence since the last game is because the party defeated the legate and we've only got one epilogue session left, or a product of Bilon making a desperate draw from the Deck of Many Things and transforming the world into nothing but shrimp.

-Autistic Angel

They're also reporting that a free bit of DLC will be available to download through PSN on February 12:

Publisher Namco Bandai has revealed that players can download the Draggle familiar, which was previously unavailable in North America, free of charge. Considering how most publishers try to milk every cent out of post-release content, this is a welcome bit of generosity.

-Autistic Angel