• White people killing Native Americans who have turned out to be savages.
• White people killing aborigines in Australia who turn out to be savages.
• Japanese people killing Chinese or Korean people who turn out to be savages.

You just can't separate these situations from history.

Yes you can. You just don't want to, because shouting "racism!" makes you feel good. I don't see a problem with any of the above, because you aren't killing any of those races because of their race. You're killing them because they've become something else.

Let's compare this to something that hasn't got anything to do with racism: Many cities and towns in the northern end of Norway were burned to the ground by the Germans in WW2 in order to deny their enemies use of these towns. Now imagine Resident Evil taking place in that region, where events lead to a town being burned to the ground to stop the zombie plague there. It's easy to draw a historical parallel to WW2, but why should you? These two events have nothing to do with each other. John F. Kennedy was assassinated during his presidency. Does that mean it's tasteless for 24 on TV to show a fictional president being assassinated? Scandinavian vikings were brutal people, killing and spreading fear across the British isles. Does that mean it's tasteless to present a viking as a hero in a game?

You're chasing ghosts, Ed. The racism you see in RE5 is only in your head. With pretty much every major fictional event in games happening in the US, it's a breath of fresh air to see the Resident Evil series explore different locales. I'm glad your way of viewing racial relationships isn't the de-facto standard, or we'd see nothing but whites killing whites in video games (as if we don't have enough of that already).

I can't see much hope for Home after trying it myself. It was a one-time experience, and I can't see myself heading back there again for a long while. It just feels like another hoop to jump through to reach the actual content on the console.

Also, I severely doubt you'll ever see gambling for actual money in Home. If Sony implemented something like that, Home would instantly become illegal to use in countries like Norway, where gambling for money is against the law. Banks would also block transactions to Home.

On an unrelated note, the "Anybody who calls somebody racist is racist and hurting anti-racism" argument is not only circular, but also ridiculous.

Indeed. It's a good thing nobody here is saying that, then. We're not saying that calling someone racist is racism, but instead we are saying that treating a particular race differently from another race (in this case Ed thinks it's right for white people to be zombified, but wrong for black people), even if done under the guise of anti-racism, can be considered racist if taken too far.

Yes, they were members of her crew. The murders happened some time after the monster attack, as the severed hand had deteriorated rather badly at the time. Considering she was 7 months pregnant at the time of the attack, I'd say there was probably a period of about 2-4 weeks between the events.

The first guy into the temple made me think of Mustafa in Austin Powers. Seemed quite calm considering what happened after his team tried to give him a hand.

Otherwise I liked it.

What makes you so certain that was actually him? I vote he was either possessed by the smoke monster already, or he was dead and the monster manifested as him (an ability that has been documented earlier). If we assume that Danielle was correct and her people actually got "sick", it might mean that they were all possessed or manifestations eventually.

I let this drop off my radar.

Imagine there is a game where you play somebody going to Israel, and then all the Jews become crazy and you have to mow them down. Maybe your character is German, even. And the Jews are all part of some huge conspiracy to take over the world.
Crazy or not, would it still be ok for a game to portray you as a German slaughtering Jews?

I use this comparison because both Jews and Africans have been the targets of whole-scale slaughter.

And the reason I don't think FarCry 2 is as problematic is that it understands the history of colonialism and genocide, and the game is about a character ADDING to that chaos and how even though you are making these decisions, you are supposed to feel uncomfortable with your actions. Adding a parasite that controls the minds of black people doesn't make them less black, it just lets you feel better about mowing them down.

I was pretty uncomfortable with Uncharted's seemingly exclusively brown and black enemy roster, too. It was the main reason I stopped playing.

This isn't a game about germans slaughtering jews by the hundreds. That would be tasteless because it would most likely be an overt attempt at being provocative. RE5 isn't. The reason they put the game's events in Africa is because they wanted the end to the story to begin at the very beginning (of humanity). It's a touch of irony that was the main argument they used when they decided where the game was going to take place. Go ahead, check the first announcement videos. The devs proudly talk about how they reached that decision.

By your definition, any zombie game that occurs in a non-white population is instantly racist. If the next Resident Evil features a large section where you have to fight your way through, say, Chinatown in a major US city, that would be racist according to you. If it takes place in, say, Vietnam, it would also be racist. Do you realize what someone who's so extremely anti-racist that they treat every non-white race with silk gloves is? A racist. From dictionary.com: "Racism: Discrimination or prejudice based on race." (among other definitions).

Ed, I'm not trying to insult you. I'm just trying to show you that you've taken the anti-racism to an extreme. The 5+ other Resident Evil games all took place among a white population. Why isn't that racist? RE4 grossly misrepresented Spanish people, yet nobody cried foul (neither do you, from what I can see). What makes the Spanish so special that they don't deserve your silk gloves? Is it that they're white, perhaps?

RE5 isn't racist. You may think it is, but it isn't.

I think the difference between this and FC2 is that RE5 is a fantasy/horror scenario while FC2 is, essentially, real-world.  Further, I think FC2 deals with the political unrest directly, putting you in the middle of warring factions - you get the sense that you're not going to fix the problem, and you're just being hired to take care of some specific situations - for every side involved, I might add.  They're killing each other, you're just there.

Now I haven't played more of RE5 than the demo, so maybe all of this is addressed in the gameplay.  Given past RE games, I tend to doubt it, but who knows.  They may be growing up.   

On a personal level, I don't have a problem with someone trying something like this at all, but, yeah, if you're going to set a game in Africa, have Africans charging like they're rabid at the white protagonist and ask you to mow them down, then you should expect some complaints and contoversy.  Eye roll icons don't change that.

I'm still willing to give the benefit of the doubt, having not played the game yet.  I'm not actually condemning them.  I do think that people have a right to wonder if the game crosses a line, though.

You do realize the people you fight are possessed by a parasite that controls their thoughts and behaviors, right? They essentially become "zombies".

What a horrible demo. It's the same old horrible controls, but now with some obliviously racist characters and situations!

Oh no, not this argument again. How is this game racist? Just because it takes place in Africa and the bad guys are African?

I know this argument has been rumbling for a while, but I have to say they chose to set the game in a racially explosive location.  There's going to be some backlash.

Also, I was surprised to find that I felt a little uncomfortable.

I don't get this argument at all. "Nobody" complained about the very inaccurate rendition of a Spanish village in Resident Evil 4, but when a similar thing is done with an African village in Resident Evil 5, suddenly it's racist? Exclusively treating anything African with silk gloves would be truly racist. This isn't.

What a horrible demo. It's the same old horrible controls, but now with some obliviously racist characters and situations!

Oh no, not this argument again. How is this game racist? Just because it takes place in Africa and the bad guys are African?

I do PS3 only! I refuse to buy games for my 360 after 2 of them broke.
So now I don't play online, really.

Why not play online with the PS3? I've been playing Burnout Paradise online in the last 3 evenings, and it has been an absolutely painless experience (if you don't consider how stupid most of the players are :p )

Thanks for the info. I knew about the "Fast" menu thing, but none of it makes any sense to me. They buried the options menu 4-5 clicks deep (also there was no sound option for Atomica's voice, so no luck there). The Start button should bring up a regular menu that has game options on it. I appreciate the stats, and the game tracks a bazillion of them, but the city map should've been assigned to a button itself IMO. And I still don't see any controller mapping, either editing or informational.

Are people playing on Live? if so, I might trade out my PS3 version for the 360 version.

Don't tell me you've never even attempted to press the Select button while in the game, despite looking for a map button AND despite me saying in my last post that the Select button opens the map. I guess I've done all I can to help by this point...

sigh - so, it seems after searching a bit, that its not that rare an issue, but appearently, the danish stores refuse to do anything about it - so damn nice.

Thats 1200 dollars out the window...

What kind of draconic consumer laws do you have in Denmark? Here in Norway, the store you bought the PS3 in would be required by law to get the problem fixed for you swiftly if it occured within the first 5 (yes, five!) years after your purchase. If repairs take longer than a week, they'd also be required to supply you with a temporary replacement PS3 while you're waiting. If they fail to fix it, they'd have to give you a brand new one, or your money back.

The TED conferences are where the best and brightest minds give presentations on some interesting or exciting field of research.  His did not count. 

It's almost like it was a joke or something.

It was a helpful explanation of the history behind the joke. I didn't know what TED was, for example.

Criterion has done an amazing job at maintaining this game, and the premium content planned for 2009 looks almost Blizzard/WoW like in it's scope. They have breathed new life into this one.

That said, the interface blows. Ok, maybe my interface navigation skills suck, but I have yet to be able to find something as simple as pulling up the city map. I can't find the control scheme (this is on a PS3 btw). I wanted to check to see what the various controls were set to. I got my copy used from gamestop and didn't get a manual (I found a 360 pdf manual online but not PS3).  The menu system in the game seems really weird to me.

Also, DJ Atomica is very quiet. I can barely hear him talking. Everything else is loud, including the music, which I turned down but still can just barely hear Atomica.

Lastly, does anyone know how to add your own music to the PS3 version?

Hit Select to bring up the map, or Start to bring up the stats page. From either of those you can hit the L1 or R1 buttons to navigate to other menus, including the options-menu (where you can configure sound and soundtracks). There's of course also the Easy Drive menu available while driving by pressing the right arrow key.

I think I joined GoneGold back in 2000, but I don't think a lot of people in here even recognize my nick. 

Today I was wondering what happens when they all return to the island. The island stops time warping. Charles Widmore won't be able to find them. They will be friends with the Others. No longer will they be focused on trying to get off the island or be rescued. What now? Hang out on the beach hoping the smoke monster doesn't appear?

My theory is that Widmore will be able to follow them somehow. In the end, they'll realize that the only way to stop all the pain and trouble (and potential future disaster) the Island is causing is to destroy the entire thing. I think season 6 will focus on a small-scale war upon the island, where the stakes are Widmore's time-space domination versus the Island's destruction.

[Spoiler]

Spoiler for Hiden:

The more I think about it, the less it makes sense. Just having Russia deny using a hydrogen bomb on US soil wouldn't be enough. America wouldn't even consider the possibility that anyone but Russia could have used it, and with such weapons at their disposal, American bombs would be launched all the quicker. Something would have to happen that everyone who sees will agree can't have been terrestrial in origin, or all would be lost. If there's no common extraterrestrial enemy, the conflict isn't solved, but rather escalated.

I don't think they properly thought this through. It's like the studio didn't really understand what the "alien" was about.

Lost has proven that no one is dead unless you see them decapitated and then you personally burn the corpse. Even then they might find a way to bring the person back to life.

How so? Those who have died so far have stayed dead. There's potential that Locke may return to life somehow, but I'm not so sure. Nobody actually believed Jin was dead, particularly since we didn't actually see him die in the first place.

And Hurley seeing ghosts doesn't count.

Well, they do aspire to have Home be our main portal to PS3 content, so it's only natural for them to make it a default. It'll probably be moved when Home completely flops.

If anyone figures out how to make the icon go away, let me know.  I suspect that they won't let you get rid of it, even though after you try it, you'll want to completely eradicate the POS from your system.

The icon is always there, regardless of whether or not you've previously installed Home. Home is installed through this shortcut on the main PS3 menu, and not through the PS Store. It's not a leftover from your installation.

[Spoiler]

About the ending:

Spoiler for Hiden:

That rewrite of the ending sounds weird. Wasn't the whole point of the "alien" to make the governments of the world unite against a common, imaginary enemy? And wouldn't a Hydrogen bomb on US soil just be considered an experimental Russian weapon, instead serving as a catalyst to mutual, total destruction?

... Aaaand I just finished the European demo. Nifty, if short. The controls are going to take some time getting used to after the excellent ones in Resistance 2. It feels hard to tweak your aiming.

I think Capcom may have messed up a bit by including the levels they did in the demo. If this is anything like RE4, you won't meet hordes of enemies very often. It's like making a demo for RE4 that features only the initial shootout in the village; it's a memorable scene, but it doesn't define the general gameplay.

Also, the main game will feature much more than just "zombies". We'll also see some pretty nasty creatures, including some that first appeared in earlier RE games (before RE4). The game also doesn't take place entirely in sunlight. What has been focused on in the ad campaigns, screenshots and videos so far has been almost exclusively from the first third of the game. The rest takes place in swamps and ruins (both in the dark), and a high-tech lab of some sort (to mention a few things I've seen in the trailers).

I guess I'll be the dissenting opinion here. I just finished playing the first of the two levels on the PS3 demo, and I enjoyed it a lot! Had a huge grin on my face through the entire thing, and got through it in one attempt. I made sure to play it "properly" as well, so I immediately started pushing stuff in front of the entrances, and instead of trying to hole up in that shack (bad idea), I made sure to make a run for it as soon as an opportunity presented itself. My partner gave me ammo at one point when I was running low, and she got out of the way quickly if I pointed my gun in her direction. She also saved my ass when I didn't notice that a group of people had climbed over a hill to get behind me (one of them grabbed me, upon which she kicked him off me. I returned the favor later).

After running into the streets and getting a rough idea of how the place looked, I started climbing onto the rooftops. "Zombies" kept jumping and climbing after me (at one point surprising me by even climbing across a fence that I first thought would lead outside the map, and the big guy with the hammer was a good cue that I was long overdue for finding a different spot to take cover in. I kept running low on ammo, always finding another clip just when I was about to run out.

I was forced off the rooftops eventually, and was surrounded on street level. Ran towards a house and kicked in its door, ran straight through it and jumped out the window on the opposite side, buying me a bit more time. I holed myself up in a market of some kind, thinking I had reasonably good control over the choke points. Nope, the hammer-guy made his own access tunnel by smashing his way through the market. In the end I was trapped between him and a group of zombies, and I was low on health. Just when I thought I was going to die, the helicopter came to the rescue, saving the day.

It was amazing.

Edit: I think many people in this thread aren't aware of the 180-degree turn command. On the PS3, you pull backwards on the left stick while pressing X, and you immediately flip around. If you aren't aware of this command, I can see why you'd think the controls are sluggish. As it is, they felt just right.

5) No surprise that Daniel Faraday's mom is the woman in LA working with Ben. Weird how they had differing loyalties: Daniel with Widmore and the mom with Ben.

It's very very likely that Faraday's mom appeared in a different situation in this episode. She's probably the woman who took Faraday to the bomb and said she didn't trust him.

Maybe Faraday is his own father!   

No way would they let that happen. For one thing, it wouldn't fly on American TV. In addition, Faraday already seems to have deduced that she is his mother, hence his comments about her being familiar.

Moliere really needs to learn how to use the spoiler tag

Why? The thread title itself says that the thread contains spoilers, so people can avoid the thread if they're not up to date with the show.

3) Desmond and Penny have a son and name him Charlie. What are the odds that this boy will grow up to be the actual Charlie that died on the island? [M. Night Shyamalan]What a twist![/M. Night Shyamalan]

Pretty much non-existing, I'd say. Charlie had a big brother, remember?

5) No surprise that Daniel Faraday's mom is the woman in LA working with Ben. Weird how they had differing loyalties: Daniel with Widmore and the mom with Ben.

It's very very likely that Faraday's mom appeared in a different situation in this episode. She's probably the woman who took Faraday to the bomb and said she didn't trust him.

I'm not sure you've played the captain enough, then. I have a level 56 captain (my main character), and while his style has evolved throughout his lifetime, he's still a solo powerhouse with very respectable DPS (of course, this is because I've specced him that way, but this is a choice that is entirely up to each player). I can solo creatures 5 levels above me with relative ease, though I can't readily fight elites unlike a few other classes (Lore Master, I'm looking at you!).

Saying that the captain is a pure support class is a common misconception. He can actually do pretty damn well at almost any role you want to give him, with a few exceptions, as long as you spec him for it. With MoM, he can now be an effective healer, an effective tank, or a pet controller (or any combination of the three). Heralds are always around, but the reason most people stop using them at higher levels is because they can be a hassle to drag around. They are still pulled up in situations that require them.

A critical hit from a captain's Devastating Blow skill is a sight to behold (not only because of the DPS, but because it also gives you the opportunity to immediately pull off your powerful kill-skills).

some more details.

Read: Some more story spoilers. There's almost no new info on gameplay that I can see.

I also really like the captain, do really nice dps and don't understand the hate towards them.  Self healing, group buffs, heavy armor, 2H dps and a pet that tends to help more than hinder.  One of them will make it to 50 eventually so I can check out the expansion areas...I just don't know which one yet.  I may just keep splitting time between the three until they are all at least 30 before deciding.

Where have you seen hate for the captain class? My impression is that people like the class (especially to group with), but the majority doesn't want to play a support class with no clear role in a party. Also, captains don't really have much in the way of self-healing. There's the herald ability that is available when you use heralds (which most captains don't at higher levels), and a skill you can use once per minute or so at very high levels if you're specced as a healer-captain. Oh, and the healing shout, but that's so limited that it hardly counts (need to kill an enemy, upon which you get a 5-second window to use the skill). The captain is much, much better at healing others than at healing himself, which is considered one of his weaknesses.

There's supposed to be an alternate control system in the game, made to resemble Gears of War controls. Isn't that available in the demo?

Ok that was a lot of shit that happened in those 2 hours.

Wow.

I am so glad there are only 2 seasons left so they work to an actual end...whatever it is.

For once I'm starting to see the silhouette of the ending in the horizon. I suspect the island will have to be destroyed or "banished" somehow in order to protect the world. I fully expect Jack to die while accomplishing this.

I bought both Resistance 1 and 2 last week and have been playing them pretty much non-stop, heading directly to Resistance 2 after finishing the first one. I loved both the games, although R1 was poorly designed in some areas, having too few waypoints and too many cheap ways to die.

Anyone who says R1's graphics are better than R2's obviously haven't played R1 for a long while. Playing them directly after each other, it's like night and day. R2's graphics are miles ahead of R1, and are absolutely stunning at times. I'd often just stop and admire a scene before moving on, something that just didn't happen in the first one.

I felt the narration was tight and the missions were all memorable and fun. The end left a smile on my mouth, as it felt right and I was expecting something like that to happen.

I disagree with many of the flaws that have been mentioned in this thread. Having to turn away from danger to sprint to a better position is tense, and it almost never leads to your death (thanks to slow enemy attacks) unless you choose bad cover that leaves you exposed. If people play this game, expecting to be able to sit behind the same cover fighting a horde of enemies, they're in for a rude awakening. Battles are balanced so that you have to run from cover to cover, often away from the enemy lines, just so they won't outflank you. Battle awareness is very important. If you play this as you'd do, say, COD4, you're going to get frustrated. I finished the game on the medium difficulty level, and it felt just right. There were a couple of tough sections, but I was always able to get through them by trying to play smarter. Tip: If you continually die in a certain situation, try something different. Sometimes the same old tactic won't work.

The game's biggest flaw is something that appears mostly only in later missions. At that point you often end up in situations where the game sends you against a foe (or group of foes) that you simply don't have the weapons to defeat. You then have to run around blindly looking for the hidden place where the needed weapon is, and you're never ever given any hints about where to look.

Overall I enjoyed R2 very much, and consider it well worth the money. Got 26% trophy completion on my first playthrough.

[Spoiler]

Spoiler for Hiden:

The plot twist pushed the game from good to phenomenal, IMO.  Just talking about it is a spoiler, though.

Spoiler for Hiden:

I didn't know there would be a plot twist, yet I knew exactly what it was about 15 minutes into the game. I think that's part of the reason I didn't like the game. The storytelling felt too simplistic due to the transparent twist. Good plot twists should always be hinted at early in the story through SUBTLE hints, but in KOTOR they were like sledgehammers.

I'm not sure, actually. I played through the game, but I never loved it or liked it. It was just... there. I guess we have different reasons for not appreciating it though. My biggest problem was that it just felt like D&D in space. The Star Wars setting was poorly implemented, with characters all ending up equipped with uber armor and looking like christmas trees, and pretty much every scenario involving slaughtering your way through dungeons (with the exception of the dialogue-based quests, which are the only reason I bothered to play through the thing). Jeremy Soule's music added insult to injury, feeling more like Oblivion or Morrowind than Star Wars.

Oh shit! If that's the kind of fighting skills I'll come up against online, I'm scared already. 

Got myself a PS3 just before christmas, and I now need more people in my friends-list. My PSN name is TiLT42.

I wasn't even hyped for this one a week ago.

But remembering my love for Sakura...I am psyched again.

Anyone else going PS3 version?  Or is everyone going to buy sticks for 360?

I'll be getting the PS3 version on release date. In a move very much unlike myself, I plan to play this game a lot online.

[Spoiler]

Spoiler for Hiden:

I like how the first episode confirmed one of my major theories about the show. I've been speculating for a while that there was time travel involved, but also that the time traveling here is completely different from most of the stuff we see from Hollywood. Usually, movies and TV involving time travel will go the Back to the Future route, where changes made to the past may lead you off into an "alternate dimension" where things turned out differently, leaving the original dimension intact. I theorized that Lost had only one timeline, and that paradoxes are impossible because the universe will force them to not happen. This means that even absurdly unlikely events will happen if their only alternative is a paradox. This was all confirmed in episode one of season 5.

I further speculate that the Others have traveled into the future to see how events unfold, which allows them to take a casual approach to danger. Once a future event has been witnessed by a time traveler who returns to an earlier point in time afterwards, that event MUST happen, no matter what. This is why Michael couldn't kill himself and why he could only die after handling the bomb. Christian Shepard, though his real role in all of this is unknown, had traveled to the point in time where the bomb exploded, and had observed the event (and gave a quick comment, as we saw in last season). When he returned, he was able to say with absolute confidence that this would happen, which again allowed the Others to easily manipulate Michael to go through with it.

Several other things throughout the show can be explained through this as well. We'll see how much the show tells us outright, and how much we have to figure out for ourselves in the end.

Wait, does this show actually involve time travel?    I've never watched the series but have certainly been curious, however I thought it was more a modern-day Gilligan's Island with a bit of suspense, not Back to the Future sans Doc Brown.   

I've heard you either love it or hate it, and as I am looking for great TV series to add to my DVD collection I am curious, but cautiously apprehensive.  And the idea of time travel or "time shifting" makes me even a bit more skeptical.

Don't worry. It's nothing like Back to the Future's time travel. In fact, you probably haven't seen much, if anything, like this ever before.