Burke's Joystick

The results are in for Burke's Joystick first official poll!  If you recall, the poll question was: If  Barack Obama was a character from a video game, which character would he be?  The choices were: Pac Man Capt. John Soap MacTavish from Call of Duty John Henry Eden from Fallout 3 Jim Raynor from Starcraft Kane from Command and Conquer Gordon Freeman from Half-life Arcturus Mengsk from Starcraft Commander Shepard from Mass Effect Vladimir Makarov from Call of Duty The people have spoken!  The result:  Arcturus Mengsk from Starcraft! This is a wise choice.  Truth is, the political rhetoric of Arcturus Mengsk, versus the latter reality, are quite similar to what we have experienced from Barack Obama.  

Let me tell you a story: Back when I was a prisoner in a government-run public school, one of my social studies teachers said something profoundly stupid, so profoundly stupid that I remember it to this day.  During a discussion on the importance of voting, he said: It is important for every American to vote.  Remember, it doesn't matter for whom you vote, just as long as you vote! Now, even back then when I had little political knowledge or interest, that statement just sounded so...wrong to me.  I mean,  "it doesn't matter for whom you vote"?   In other words, it's not the outcome that matters but the process?  I remember scratching my head over that at the time, just knowing at some ineffable level that that was the type of statement that summed up everything that was wrong with the public school curriculum.  Taking that to its logical conclusion, it means there is no qualitative difference between casting a vote for Adol...

[Note:  I am sorry that I haven't had much to post here the last week or so.  Don't worry, this blog is not done yet!   Rather, I just needed a break to handle some matters.  Eyestrain headaches were starting to kick in from the writing I was doing here and elsewhere, plus I found myself spending more time that I thought possible finding and installing a new video card toy for my old PC - what a difference it has made in my CoD:MW3 performance already!   Lastly, it is the closing days of summer, so I didn't want them to go to waste as I have all fall, winter, and spring to blog! Moving on.... One of the reasons I love modern gaming is that I find it to be a hypothesized science fiction future made real in the here and now.  We don't look at it this way because like most science fiction that has become science fact, we sort of just accept it as another humdrum facet of the modern world.  I mean, imagine taking such incredible title...

I'm not a soldier, but I play one in video games.  If there is one thing countless hours spent in such shooters as Call of Duty, Battlefield, Arma , and Red Orchestra have taught me its that soldiers are most definitely NOT wimps or cowards.  I mean, as much as the media likes to constantly say that the FPS genre teaches kids that war is fun, the truth of the matter is that anyone - kid or otherwise - who has spent a few hours in a shooter quickly learns that warfare, particularly modern warfare, is deadly business, a message quite distinct from Hollywood and its action movies where the hero never gets much more than a flesh wound - I'm looking at you, Expendables 2 .  It is for this reason that I have always believed that the modern shooter is probably the greatest tool for promoting peace the world as ever seen.  Video gamers have seen the virtual horrors of war and have no desire for it to play out in real life. It is for this reason that real life s...

"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...

Tomorrow looks to be a fun day as the long expected Beta 4 for Elemental: Fallen Enchantress is due out.  I know what you are thinking:  isn't that the sequel to 2010's biggest gaming flop?  Well, not exactly.  To be exact, Fallen Enchantress is the ambitious stand alone expansion to Elemental:War of Magic.  That is, it aspires to become the game we all hoped EWOM was going to be before the whole thing crashed and burned, and then some!   And let me tell you something: based on Beta 3, there is good reason to be optimistic that it will succeed.  Initially, I wasn't that optimistic - Betas 1 & 2 were merely marginal improvements on the EWOM formula at best.  However, Beta 3 surprised me with its noticeable shift in quality.  Instead of coming across as a grade 'C' Civ clone, Beta 3 made FE finally feel like its own game - and quite an interesting one at that.

Did you hear?  Kaos Studios' first person shooter experience, Homefront , is going to be a movie!  Really!  Check out the trailer here: Okay, I wasn't truthful with you.  Yeah, the above trailer is from the remake of Red Dawn .   Funny thing is, this might as well be the movie version of Homefront as the two plots are identical!  Check out the Homefront trailer: Yeah, try and tell me the Red Dawn remake isn't Homefront in disguise....