South Park, The stick of truth

So I played what is probably the best game to come out since Skyrim, it is just sadly wearing a very ugly shirt. South Park the stick of truth is a great RPG, and the only thing that brings it down, in my opinion, is the south park aspect. There are a few episodes of the show that really stand out for me to be sure, but they are the ones that are a little less of the edgy side and that focus more on satire than anything else (Night of the living homeless, Make Love, Not Warcraft, Good Times with Weapons). Sadly the only thing that really brings down The stick of truth is the south park aspect. It is a little broken, but then again every RPG is broken if you put the time into it and know what you are doing (I'm looking at you FF7 and FFX and FFX2 ) If you are a fan of RPGs and think you could tolerate about 6 to 10 hours of humor that a 12 year old would find funny presented in a way that an adult could enjoy, then I really think you should play Stick of truth.

Long time no see.

BEEN AWAY FOR A WHILE, MY BAD GUYS.

I am sorry that it has been so long between posts, I have been a very busy person, but that's aok by me. Also haven't had access to the internet during my soulsearching and trying to figure out what I wanted to do. It all started out with many failed game capture attempts due to my personal retardation. However I do think I have a handle on it now and I am here to stay, it also helps that I now have access to a real smartphone not just a blackberry so I can actually do internet related things and update on mobile, so thats something at least. Also, I think I have a grasp on this whole game capture thing too, so perhaps we will be able to get some of that going on. So I ask you this, what do you guys want to see?

Interactive storytelling vs video games.

Alright, so this thought occurred to me today. I dislike games where my character, and thus me as a player make no difference in the outcome of the game. For example, most modern military shooters (I have battlefield 3 on my mind at the time of writing) me as a player and thus my character do not control the story. My character, posted in unspecifiedistan, follows his orders and it -looks- like we are contributing to the story, however if my character were to die someone else would pick up where he left off and continue the mission. COD Ghost is an exception where you as a player are in the wrong place at the right time and you do have swing in the story and if your character were to have died at any point prior in the story it would go very differently. I also dislike games where the outcome of the story doesn't matter, take for example borderlands 1, it didn't matter who got all the pieces of the key for the vault, all that mattered is that it gets opened so borderlands 2 can happen E.G. If the crimson raiders had of opened the vault the creature would still have been killed and the eridium would have been spread onto the planet. Now, Skyrim, while anyone can defeat a dragon, your character is the only person who can destroy them, and (Because I choose to think that there is an infinite amount of them for gameplay reasons only) I like to think that there is a finite amount of dragons to kill and in theory if you were to slay them all they would never come back. By extension, if the main player were to die, there would be no one to stop the dragons. Basically my logic is this, if in a game my character can die and instead of respawning I could just take control of a different person in the same general area and continue on with the game I probably don't enjoy it as much. Also games where the story in general is irrelevant (I'm looking at you Left 4 dead) I just can't get immersed in the game. What I mean is they never seem to have survival on their mind, you never have to collect food or water, you just move loading screen to loading screen to get to the final loading screen so you can watch credits fly up the screen. So I guess what I mean to say is I am not a fan of interactive story telling, and instead prefer games that are open and nonlinear such as Skyrim and even the fallout series. The fallout series is interesting because you are typically the only person who is actually trying to 'do' the story missions you are doing things for other people sure, but the main objective is only being done because you as a character are there and driving the plot in the direction you choose.

US army proving grounds (almost a year off)

For various reasons I have had to take some time off but not I am back and wondering what everyone is doing. I was looking over steam and found a game called US army proving grounds or something like that and I was wondering if it had some sort of Last Starfighter vibe to it where if you 100% the game seal team 6 lands at your house and drafts you into the us military. The only reason I ask is because I am going to assume that for the 90% of people who 100% the game are not exactly US army material myself included.

Video games and violence

To begin with I am going to state that I am very well adjusted and have never thought of killing someone ever. Well sure once or twice I have thought about it, but I would never actually do it. That being said let's jump into the story of the day.

I have been playing video games for most of my life and for the most of my adult life I have been curious about serial killers, and children who are killers as well .The one thing I have seen over and over is it all gets traced back to violent games and television. I don't agree with this synopsis, there has to be another factor in there somewhere, if all it took was a violent game to make someone a killer then I would be 76 kills into an unstoppable kill streak that would make Ted Bundy jealous. Perhaps the missing element is how I was raised, I lived with my dad and he always taught me that all life is equal, he didn't teach me to hate blacks, jews, gays or anything like that. I learned to hate people for who they are on a personal level without judging them by their outward appearance.

So why are games targeted; Because someone can turn on almost any game released between October to December every year and (in the even of the 2011 Christmas release) they would have seen Saints row the third, Gears of War 3, battlefield 3, and Modern warfare 3. All of these games have one thing in common, they are all violent and they are all visceral in the application of it. The thing is that the most realistic game in the world is still distinguishable from reality very much so. This makes a good point for someone trying to say that games are violent, so the people who play them must be as well. But I can also say that corporal punishment (E.G. spanking) has also been kicked off the table and most other forms of discipline have been as well.   C.A.S. (or C.P.S for my american readers) have stated that should you wish to punish your children and opt to give them a time out in the corner, a child should be placed in the corner for one minute for every year of their age. I don't know about all of you but that would have been like giving a murderer 10 hours of comunity service so far as I was concerned as a child.

I guess what I am trying to say is that parents need to spend more time raising their children and teaching them how the world works.