Burke's Joystick

Lately, I've been pretty harsh on the world of PC gaming, even to the point of labeling the industry as being  downright disreputable . I still stand behind those sentiments. And little, if anything, has changed in the intervening months. Things are still pretty rotten around these here parts, perhaps more so as we now can add disreputable indie developers - who hype projects, pocket lots of crowd-sourced cash, and ultimately release  mediocre  products - to the mix. It's all enough to make a man want to take up chess again....  Be that as it may, there is one aspect of the shameful record of modern gaming that I do feel I need to revisit in the interest of fairness, and that would be EA/DICE's Battlefield 4 . As I have pointed out time and again over the last few months (most notably  here  &  here , amongst other threads ), BF4 was a good poster child for everything that is ailing the modern games industry: it was a title that seemed to be...

One of the things I have tried to show via this blog is how modern video games, like a good book or a good movie, can shed light on geopolitical events.  This is not that startling: military and political scientists have been using "games theory" for a very long time to simulate the world of realpolitik.   Games are very good at this because they can smartly abstract the salient military and political principles that are operative in our world, thereby making them easier to digest.  So, for example, in my last post I showed how DICE's first-person shooter Battlefield 3 captures an essentially correct vision of high-intensity warfare in the Persian Gulf, making it a game I believe every politician should play at least once before glibly voting for another Gulf war (especially in light of the fact that a mere 21.8% of congress have actual military experience).  In the specifics, it might not come close to real combat, but it does capture the fundamental...

Did you hear?!?  American troops have engaged Russian forces in combat in Syria!  It's true!  Here's the footage: Darn intro text got cut off!  I am still not good at video editing! Okay, okay, that wasn't actual combat footage, but footage from one of my recent sessions in DICE's Battlefield 3, a first person shooter that revolves around American and Russian troops fighting it out in the Middle East.   So that wasn't real...but I find it a strangely compelling vision of just what a larger international conflict might look like in Syria.

There was a story a few days ago concerning the Supreme Court video game related case, Brown et alia. v. Entertainment Association of America .  It seems that Justice Kagan had some...er, illuminating remarks concerning how they went about formulating their decision on whether or not video games enjoy First Amendment protection.  Justice Kagan said:   ...the justices often turn to their clerks, who are much younger, to help them understand new technologies. But they also try to learn on their own. In one case, involving violent video games the first year she was on the court, justices who had never played the games before dove in and gave them a try, Kagan said. “It was kind of hilarious,” she said. She didn’t say which games they played. I found it interesting how the general consensus amongst the gaming press was basically "ain't it cool!" and "I wonder which games they played?"  The only appropriate response was outrage, of course....

It's all going down the drain. That's the best way I can describe what is happening to my beloved hobby of gaming.  Right down the drain. I guess it is is apropos seeing that the same thing is happening to this great nation of ours.   Republican, Democrat, console dev, or PC dev...it doesn't matter.  It seems everyone is content to watch the train wreck happen rather than do something about it. Hence, the reason why I haven't written in a long while.  It's not that I didn't want to write, it is just that there has been absolutely nothing to write about.  Even my leftist opponents in the gaming press have run out of things to talk about - don't blame 'em, after all how can to inject militant feminism into a platformer??? Gaming, it would seem, is dying. Now, why would I say that?

As you probably heard, a rather big snowstorm - blizzard even! - is going to hit a large portion of the Tri-State area and New England.  Details: Blizzard Warning NJZ006-104-106-108-NYZ071>075-176-178-081200- /O.CON.KOKX.BZ.W.0001.130208T1100Z-130209T1800Z/ HUDSON-EASTERN BERGEN-EASTERN ESSEX-EASTERN UNION- SOUTHERN WESTCHESTER-NEW YORK (MANHATTAN)-BRONX- RICHMOND (STATEN ISLAND)-KINGS (BROOKLYN)-NORTHERN QUEENS- SOUTHERN QUEENS- 1054 PM EST THU FEB 7 2013 ...BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 6 AM FRIDAY TO 1 PM EST SATURDAY... * LOCATIONS...NEW YORK CITY...SOUTHERN WESTCHESTER COUNTY...AND COASTAL PORTIONS OF NORTHEAST NEW JERSEY. * HAZARD TYPES...HEAVY SNOW AND STRONG WINDS. * ACCUMULATIONS...SNOW ACCUMULATION OF 10 TO 14 INCHES...WITH LOCALIZED HIGHER AMOUNTS WITHIN DEVELOPING SNOW BANDS. * WINDS...NORTH 15 TO 25 MPH WITH GUSTS UP TO 45 MPH. * TEMPERATURES...FALLING INTO THE 20S BY FRIDAY EVENING. * VISIBILITIES...ONE QUARTER MILE OR LESS AT TIMES. * ...

[WARNING 1: Image heavy blog posting follows!] [WARNING 2: BF3 fans should be prepared to have their minds blown!]  When I had moved on from the tried and true Battlefield: Bad Company 2 to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 , something immediately struck me about the difference in maps: those in MW3 were so much more vibrant than those in BC2. MW3's maps were not only more colorful, but the locations had a "lived in" feeling. That is, the art design of the maps successfully communicated the idea that people had actually lived in these locations prior to the arrival of the bad tempered soldiers; that the terrain players merely saw as a good camping spot or a wonderful sniper's nest were much more than that: they were formerly homes and businesses of the now displaced citizenry. it just made everything seem much more believably tragic. Unfortunately, the maps is BC2 lacked similar depth to them. While they superficially resembled homes and ...

I am not what you would call much of a "movie goer".  Never was, for that matter.  Rather, I am the type of person whom would much rather wait a few months so I can watch a movie in the comfort of my home instead of in a sticky-floored, teenager-chatting movie theater...and for top dollar, no less.  No thanks,  I can wait. This is why I have just gotten around to seeing the actioner, Act of Valor (AoV).  When I first heard the pitch for this movie, I was excited: When a covert mission to rescue a kidnapped CIA operative uncovers a chilling plot, elite, highly-trained U.S. SEAL teams speed to hotspots around the globe, racing against the clock to stop a deadly terrorist attack. Pulse-pounding combat sequences, cutting-edge battlefield technology and raw emotion fuel this unprecedented blend of real-world heroism and original filmmaking -- a thrilling tribute to the skills, courage and tenacity of the world's most revered warriors. ...

I iz bak! Amazing how everything can change in a matter of minutes. For me, the world turned upside down about three week ago when my father had a heart attack. I never saw it coming as my father had no history of heart problems. Nonetheless, there I stood in the local emergency room early one Sunday morning wondering how we wound up in such dire straits. Interestingly, neither the ambulance techs, nor the emergency room doctors, could definitely conclude that my father was having a heart attack as the EKG was inconclusive, and my fathers symptoms were not the classic symptoms of a heart attack (pain down the arms and/or jaw, trouble breathing, etc.). In fact, for some three hours, the docs were thinking gallbladder attack or a bloodclot in the lung (his only symptoms were a severe pain off near his shoulder, and falling blood oxygen levels). However, the blood test showed that at some point he did have a heart attack.

The above image is one I concocted for the 2008 Democrat National Convention.  At the time I wrote: I was going to write a blog entry on all the shenanigans going on at the DNC Convention. You know, the bald-faced lies; the radicalism; the Marxist rhetoric; the vicious verbal (and almost physical) assaults on some FOX News correspondents and conservative columnists; the consistent portrayal of America in the worst possible light by leftist demagogues; the Obama cult of personality; the Clinton cult of personality… well, you get the idea. But in keeping with the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words, I decided just to post this pic.... Turns out I was right then.  Unfortunately, it looks like I am going to be right again, judging by the conga line of freaks (as The Great One would say) who are going to be headlining 2012's convention.  What has become of the party of Truman? In other news....

I confess to knowing next to nothing about The Hunger Games .  So when the movie was announced last year, and a subsequent wave of excitement swept across the internet, I was intrigued to say the least.  As I dug into it a little more and learned that the novel involved a futuristic death sport, I found myself becoming excited as well.  It's not because I am a sadist but because I am a gamer - that is what most games are about these days (but more on that later)!  So, I was also enthused...well, until the movie premiered and I started seeing things like this: Photo from:  http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/03/05/hunger-games-fan-event/ Screaming teenage girls and soccer moms are not exactly the first things I think of when the term "death sport" enters my mind.  I started to have serious misgivings....

"This week Vice President Joe Biden spoke at a senior center in Iowa. Which explains why the seniors were like, 'Is this Hell?'" –Jimmy Fallon   Poor Joe Biden.  Personally, I think our VP is a rather nice fella.  Unfortunately, he just isn't the sharpest tool in the shed.  We knew this long before he was ever VP - I mean, he was caught plagiarizing time and again.  Then there are all those wonderful gaffes caught on film: And liberals like to make fun of Palin.  Wow.   Well, ol' Joe did it again with this incredibly racist statement a few days ago: Remember when Bill Clinton complained that Team Obama "played the race card" on him?   Well, it looks like they were planning on going back to that well in their desperation to talk about anything but Obama's abysmal record.  Unfortunately for them, this time they went too far and needed to put Joe back in the attic .  Now, what has this got to do...