In the last couple of centuries, with the UK’s and USA’s efforts on the rights of children, such as child labor laws and penalties for juvenile criminals, slowly a change of perspective is occurring in other nations. We’re seeing a rise of child abuse investigations in Europe - especially former Soviet Socialist Republic, and Asia is addressing on a nation-by-nation basis, such as Japan beginning to rethink their anime/hentai industry and Thailand’s continuing crackdown on sexual tourism.

For a long time, I’ve postulated a society hold the ethics it’s resources can hold, but here’s a heinous example of how these changes are taking far too long a time to cross cultures: Monster Father imprisons his daughter for 24 years, sires 7 children, kills one of them. The mother did nothing. This isn’t to say that Austrians are pro-abuse as a culture, just that their police didn’t execute when this girl and the children needed them most.

As more of these warped people come to light due to changes in culture, the more likely we’re going to encounter similar extraordinary events, and expose entire cultures of institutionalized and consensual child abuse. Eventually, we have the potential to communicate the abhorrent treatment of young women facing a culture of rape and mutilation in more remote locations.

Children don’t have a choice. We need to set a finite line. A person who physically abuses children as a form of cultural control needs to be excised from the gene pool with prejudice. Cultures that embrace these cultural memes should be pressured by the UN to change and economic efforts should be brought to bare.

Beuller? Beuller? Anyone? I used to love Ben Stein. I mean LOVE the guy, he is smart, erudite and willing to make not-so-smart people pay for their mistakes.

I just re-read what I wrote. Ok, I do not have a fetish for Ben Stein.

After reading the transcript and watching the vid, I just have to say, Ben Stein is a Fucktard!

Please help me googlebomb him to the Jewish version of Leviticus.

Recently, a friend of mine dropped me a link to some kinetic typography on Youtube.com: a beautiful rendition of the “What Does Marcellus Wallace look like?” Pulp Fiction scene done completely in moving type. Then of course, I went on my pig-hunting-for-internet-truffles mode and discovered a Fight Club’s Space Monkey scene, more Pulp Fiction shooting Marvin in the head, and the supremely beautiful Singing in the Rain Clockwork Orange style.

Immediately after I wasted a few hours, my mind started wandering how can we make a game of speech and typography? More than a game, but a communication method that allows for both hearing and deaf people (who yell by gesturing with exaggerated moves) to combine type and graphics generated by their actions. Combine the texting message of “kthxbai” with waving hand and an image showing a phone hanging up, but only for a full speech.

Think of it as a Crayon Physics meets Guitar Hero meets KidPix where a player’s actions are translated into a graphical art form, translated in real time.

The game modes would be
- A collaborative and competitive Poetry Slam, where mp3s and scripts are translated into graphical typographical art, and each player adds to the display, where movie scenes can be downloaded onto your xBox.
- One person Freespeak, where voice translations between poets/rappers/debaters (if possible) are translated into typography, and their gestures impact their words.
- Great Speeches, where the words of Martin Luther King Jr or John F Kennedy or Malcomb X are translated into artful works through player’s emotive translations.
- ASL Learner - a basic, medium and advanced method to learn American Sign Language (or any other non-verbal language).

There would need to be a bunch of sensors - hands, fingers and maybe feet for dancing. A standardized interface would need to be used to change fonts and colors during the scenes.

Would it sell a million? Probably not. Would it open people up to doing something fun with computers interactively? Yes, I believe so.

So let’s hear it for an overcomplicated user interface and strange gameplay! Stardocks’ Sins of the Solar Empire is an a empire-building space based game that has some very nice features, is a decently designed and developed low-budget game. Sins doesn’t have a ton of fancy graphics that makes your computer churn, nor does it have a wicked sense of humor, other than naming of planets (which every space game has had since MOO #1).

Synopsis: you’re an empire, just like in Civilization or many of it’s knock offs. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to destroy the others. But like most of these games, it’s HOW you play the game that makes it different.

How far have I played? I’ve yet to win a game, I’ve gone through all the tutorials, and I’ve done at least 12 hours of gameplay. My longest game thus far is 2 hours. I prefer the large games (10 ai enemies, 5/6 suns). I’ve no desire to play multi-player due to my post-traumatic Starcraft disorder (My first internet game was being on the receiving end of what I soon learned was a Zerg rush. I still have nightmares…)

The story is average, the graphics aren’t rocking, and the interface…. well, there’s a LOT to it. If you learned all the hot keys by memory, I’m sure that the game would be more enjoyable… but since I still can’t tell reload from medic on TF2, I wanted to make sure my brain cells are reserved for other games.

So what makes this game above average? The interface has a smooth and graceful way of moving from planet to planet: a quick flick of the mouse wheel and you’re anywhere you want to be on the map. Other games have tried to implement this design and failed miserably, but Sins seems to have it right. What I fear though, is that it’s only pleasurable due to the lack of fancy graphics, allowing the scale transitions’ smoothness. Combined with quick key logic and definable grouping and everything else that makes RTS play easy, Sins is ok.

The voice work and music don’t suck either - in fact, this is the ONLY sim game that I don’t bomb the music immediately. The voices, unfortunately, due get to be a little repetitive, not because of the voice acting quality, but there just doesn’t seem to be any “Zug Zug” or “Stop poking me” loving.

One piece of graphic shiny-ness is the closeup fighting. If you mousewheel all the way in during a fight, there’s some pretty eyecandy. It’s not really interactive, but it’s pretty nonetheless. And cool. You get the dramatic sense of epic warfare by watching it.

What don’t I like? There’s five resources you have to manage: money, crystal, metal, fleet size and fleet officer cadre something or other. The first three are interactive - you can buy/sell crystals and metal for money - and have generators that throttle your development. The second two are resource purchases so you get bigger and better fleets. And no matter what, you always end up with too much of one and not enough of the other two. This may be the way I play, but at the end of each game, you can look at resources and the AI’s just don’t have it.

Also, the steamroller army is the ultimate solution for any problem: Get to 3-4 planets, build up a really big army and start steamrolling - there’s no lines of supply to worry about, so just start pillaging. Sinee the maps are ultimately circular, you can always just turn right at a planet return to your homebase, repair your ships and do it all over again.

So what’s the pet peeves: Like every sim game, there’s a game conceit moderator - if you’re beating the AI, “pirates” target you, just like the Moo2’s evil Antarians to hammer you down and hinder your progress. It’s a weak system that needs to rely on that, more importantly - if *I* have to manage 5 resources, why doesn’t the pirates? My next effort will be to build a fleet and take out their home territory just because I wanna see what happens.

Also, there’s the entire astrophysics of this game - yes, relative time in gameplay would be difficult - read Joe Haldeman’s Forever War for a good explanation why, but… planets and suns and other this just DON’T organize the way you play this game. If a solar system has 5 planets, there’s 5 planets to colonize. Terran is worlds are great, but Mars doesn’t suck when compared to Jovian gas giants, sulfur acid venuses (veni? insert penis joke here), and Mercurial burn zones. In short, if you’re going to design a space game, either use solar systems to your advantage or come up with a gameplay conceit that does it right. Just having a planet in the middle of space without any reference to it’s solar system… well, it’s just dumb.

All lifeforms are air-breathing carbon based lifeforms. Ok, I can let that one slide.

One race is psychic. Oh for frag’s sake… the horse is dead. It’s been lead to water and fell over and it’s GLUE. Pushing daisies. Writers and designers: get more originality, please.

No tactics. There’s absolutely no tactics to this game: one fleet parks it’s fat ass next to the enemy fleet and ka-POW ka-POW ka-POW. Yawn.

Now, in a battle zone that has fighters and bombers (why can’t they be both?) where’s the fucking marines? If ships are so expensive they require the resources of entire planets to build (even the small ones), then warfare would have a ton of space marine action. Ok, so this last pet peeve would be a feature scope creep in the game’s design, but even so… if you’re going to go to this detail of resource micromanagement, taking over enemy resources would be a benefit. I suspect that this was on the list of original gameplay features and Stardock/Ironclad didn’t have resources to get it finished with the rest of the game, so I’ll let this one slide.

Final Recommendation: If you like SciFi, and SimCiv games, I encourage a demo download. There’s some good and bad with this game, but it’s definitely much better than MOO3 and has some nice elements to it. If you like sim games that keeps your brains thinking, it’s a decent distraction.

Fry’s Electronics had the game for 35 bucks, where the website and Stardock sell it for $45.

Apparently Microsoft Santa is a nasty old AI. (Quote lifted from MarketingPilgrim? so obviously, it has to be true. )

What kind of sick bot programmer would confuse Christmas with Going Down on the Unpubed?

El Reg says: pizza (pi)

Santa says: Yum! What do you want for Christmas, El Reg?

El Reg says: Maybe you shouldn’t eat so much! You are quite large!

Santa says: My elves will get right on that. And what else are you wishing for this year, El Reg?

El Reg says: Maybe you shouldn’t eat it?

Santa says: See if you can get someone else to eat it!

El Reg says: Eat it

Santa says: No thank you. I don’t eat things!

El Reg says: Eat it

Santa says: See if you can get someone else to eat it!

El Reg says: Eat it

Santa says: You want me to eat what?!? It’s fun to talk about oral sex, but I want to chat about something else…

El Reg says: You dirty bastard!

Santa says: I think you’re dirty bastard.

Ahhh, good stuff.

[I hate reviewers that do not specify how far they played. I got to Act 3, with a level 22 Engineer, a level 10 Blademaster, and a level 5 Summoner - four days of nearly 25 hours of game time.]

Four days after buying Hellgate: London, I got to act three. I realized I’ve played this game before. Not only have a played this game, but I understood this game once. The game I remember had a better storyline: simple, fun and understandable. It was called Diablo 2. Now, someone has gone into Diablo, replaced the third-person isomorph with FPS/MMO, changed the names around and who writes this shit? I couldn’t figure out what any of the quest givers was saying.

Getting data about the “plot” is very difficult. Every. fucking. sentence. requires. you. to. click. Oh. Fucking. Kill. Me. Now…. hey, look, an ignore-the-boring-tedium button! Tips for game developers/publishers/writers - if you have to create a “skip this bullshit, what’s the quest?” button, YOU FAIL! If you have the same chat interface as every MMO since 1996 Forum/ICQ, YOU FAIL! If your players cant summarize what the hell they doing in a quest… well, you get the drift.

What blows my mind is that millions of dollars was spent on this game - and some serious hype - and all they came up with is Diablo 2 with a twist.

In a post-apocalyptic game like Hellgate, there needs to be some emotion and humor. Grim, passionate or otherwise. All the palladins, er, “Templars”, are just the same pansy-assed shiny twats with no emotion, no passion, and standard fare. The necromancer… er, “Summoners” are evil, manipulative and we’re-just-lucky-to-have-them-on-our-side… yawn. I remember viscerally about the emotional impact of the cut scenes from Diablo 2 - the emotional impact. The humor in the quests were… for the lack of a better term, “crisp.” They made me smile. Hellgate makes me wince at how poorly the humor has been executed.

Other than a few in-jokes (Wart’s leg), some of the names of items and quests (”Silent but Deadly”), that’s the extent of it. Not only did the dev team take Diablo 2 out of the 3D isomorph, but they took the character archetypes, and then didn’t improve one bit.

What is new are the mini-games and change of play, which is what keeps me going. The “Mini-Game” is basically items dropping from the sky once you kill/do/take damage. In a game where it’s all about the loot, this is a great concept. In a game where you’re fighting in the ruins in one of the world most iconographic cities, where you can see the left overs of two decades of slaughter… eh, not so much. The other minigames are difficult - one, you’re an anti-aircraft gun trying to take down a big… er… balloon? whale? Like a greased over-the-age pornstar, it just sits there and takes it, vomiting herpes every once in a while. The only successful change of game play was “The Cleanser” - where you remove street-herpes by liberally applying purple goop - while it was 5 minutes of game play, and extremely easy, it was fun to just slaughter with no risk to yourself.

OK, I like the game. Sorta. Am I getting my money’s worth? I don’t feel it, emotionally, but I’m still playing… waiting for it to be worth my 50 bucks. I always feel it’s going to get better once I turn around this corner and see… oh, it’s still shit. It’s my own private Hellgate.

**snort**

I’ve delayed reading Warren Ellis‘ Crooked Little Vein for some reason. Personally, I think it’s because he comes to Phoenix to sign his Black Summer comic book on the largest downpour of water I’ve ever seen in my fraggin 8 years of living in this outer circle of hell.

Ha, vengeance is mine! Take that, you published author!

Anyways, I’m on page 57 now and I demand my leagues of zombie adventurers (all 2 of you) to go buy the book. More importantly, read the fucking thing. By page two I was laughing at the rat & coffee cup, but there I was, in my way-too-cool coffee haus when I read “People who want to fuck Godzilla” made me snort my caffeine into my sinuses. Which then lead me to meeting a beautiful girl who wants to be a SuicideGirl model. We’ve been brainstorming her SG name while I write this.

So, Warren Ellis has my vote for the next pope, and I’ll pay for all of his cellphone-fetish crack hos the next time he comes to town.

It’s gonna be out in paperback eventually, so you don’t have to spend a ungodly amount.

[Writer’s group assignment: my group assigns weekly homework for us to keep our brains going. This one was a particularly vile one, so I thought I’d post it. It’s totally whiney, but fun. I’ve been asked to perform it as a talking piece. Enjoy.]

Marriage is an ex-wife calling at 3:35am because she just jumped a curb and ripped the axle out. Yes, that car, the first new car you ever bought and you bought it together. She’s hysterical and crying, drunk and/or messed up on the new drugs she’s found and she.. called… you.

Marriage is being stupid enough to offer to come pick her up, because, you know, you’re a nice guy. You want to be a good guy. You still love her. You’re stupid enough to think that her pussy is the nirvana of all nirvanas and you’d give your testicles to crawl back into that warth, that fable of completeness. And just like the during the divorce proceedings where you offer to help her move out, she tells you, “No, I’ll call my boyfriend.”

Marriage is you wondering, emotionally drained, why the hell did this bitch call you in the first place?

Marriage is the twenty years you’ve spent punishing yourself with rage and anger and lost jobs you’ve replaced her with. Every fight in crappy bars where you sought the punishment for driving your heaven away. The long line of sado-masochism, begging for forgiveness at the heals of leather clad women, tied to posts where anything walking by was invited to degrade you. One more whip, one more caress, one blunt force trauma to soft tissue with the bruises you use to scare away your friends. Anything to replace what you had.. or thought you had…

Marriage is a seven year monk-like existence, aesthetically speaking, that you buried yourself in as a small, thin wool blanket: it’s not really warm, and it doesn’t comfort you, but at least you’re not naked. Living in an apartment box, a sleeping bag and austere clothes because you don’t deserve to live in a home, a bed and a decent suit.

Marriage is the barrier to all success, the destroyer of all happiness, the reason why you’re fat, the reason why you don’t work the fat off, the reason why you hate your mom, the reason why your mom doesn’t like you, after all, you’re just so angry all the time. It’s the coral your friends have to watch out for when visiting your beaches… but you’re crafty, you always like to lower the tides as they swim away from you.

Marriage is why you laugh at crying children, roadkill, and the mothers of dead soldiers. Serves them right for being in a place where you can observe their pain.

Marriage is why five minutes of meditation is enough to make you fume. Silence is the roar of a jet plane but solitude is preferred over rage. The spews of angry lava doesn’t burn your friends when they’re not there. You do no damage unless someone pokes you. You drive your passion to those things that make others safe because your tired of seeing scars and bandages on friends.

Marriage is just another fucking way to control you, a restricting pattern to contort yourself until you’re no longer a recognizable human - it’s foot binding and when you free yourself, you find you’ll never walk again.

Marriage drives knives into your friends’ ears when you say, Fine! They want you to write about your emotions? They want you to write about marriage? You’ll give them what them want, what they asked for. You’ll do one better - you’ll be honest about it.

Marriage is the words spoken from a heart of ashes… no phoenix of fire to be reborn, no spreading over a grave for regrowth, no home-warmth hearth… Nothing to rekindle, nothing to stoke. A deep, black pit of bitter ashes.

Gotta admit, if you’re gonna have a sin, Lust is got the be the most conducive to enjoying your life to the fullest.