geekmarine

To be fair, I think it's really only a matter of time before we do see Brutal HL2, but obviously radically changing the gameplay wasn't the point of this mod, it was just to do some minor touch-ups to reflect the changes in computing power and the Source engine itself over the years. I mean, LMAO, I still remember when my computer strained to run both HL2 and Doom 3 when they first came out (mostly because I had a really crappy video card at the time - it was the best I could afford on my budget). Then I got my computer more up to snuff, handled HL2 and Doom 3 no problem, but then TF2 was released, and all the updates made to the Source Engine once again took their toll and my computer chugged along at a snail's pace trying to run it on anything but the lowest settings. So I'll be honest, I'm actually a little excited to see the original Half-Life 2 get to take advantage of changes that have come along both to average computing power and to the Source Engine itself since its original release (er, that is to say while leaving the original game itself largely intact - while I want to see improvements, I don't want to see them to the ludicrous extremes of, say, the Cinematic Mod).

Jesus man, trigger warning!

Honestly, despite being more of an action game than its predecessors, I feel like RE4 really had some good scare moments thrown in. I really felt like a lot of people overlooked that fact in their criticisms of the game (yeah, I know on the whole, the game got tons of praise, but there were some naysayers who thought it was too different from the traditional Resident Evil formula). I mean, at the beginning there's that scene when the whole friggin' village attacks you until they're called away by the church bell (first time playing, I had no idea if the onslaught was ever gonna end, so that was pretty tense). You've got the big dude who transforms into the giant monster in the barn, the giants (OMG, died so many times in the first giant battle), and those weird slime monsters that would go all spiky and were almost impossible to kill (even if they were easier to kill, they still looked freaky as hell, but that combined with only having a very tiny vulnerable spot made them that much more terrifying). Oh yeah, and who could forget the boss fight with Salazar? Really just wanted to nope right out of there. And the first time a villager's head explodes only to reveal a giant centipede thing? I mean geez... And yeah, the farther you get in the game, the better weapons you get, some of the tension goes away as you become able to just plow through hordes of enemies, but yeah, I really thought the game had some pretty damn tense moments. Oh, the fish monster, how could I forget that? EDIT: Oh, but screw Ashley... gave me friggin' flashbacks to Natalya in Goldeneye.

Wait, what? My God, this changes everything. All my life, I was convinced MAP08 was just unbeatable if you screwed up on the sinking platforms. Every time I had accidentally triggered the platforms without reaching the exit, I'd just restart the level because I thought there was no other way to the exit. Granted, that hasn't happened very often where I triggered the platforms without sinking into the slime, but there have been a few times where I managed to get back to safety, and I was just totally convinced there was no way to the exit now.

Basically all of Episode 4 from Ultimate Doom. I honestly don't think I've ever beaten it legitimately. Even E4M1 scares the crap out of me, though I know I can get through it. For Doom II, let's see... MAP24 I can beat no problem, but ugh, I have a fear of heights and those narrow walkways really put me on edge. MAP28 is friggin' brutal (so is MAP29, but MAP28 just feels like a war of attrition), and I absolutely hate MAP08 because of those platforms that you have to run over to get to the exit. Otherwise it's okay, but I hate the fact that if you screw up on those platforms, you're dropped into a pit of death and they don't come back even if you do manage to avoid falling into the slime pit - so you only have one shot at it.

I friggin' loved RE4... Never played 5 or 6, though, but honestly, I didn't mind the controls. I played the Wii version, though, so the aiming mechanic more than made up for the stiff controls. But yeah, I appreciate the fact that if the controls had been done differently, the game would've been way too easy, and the only way to compensate would be to change the enemies so much that it wouldn't even be the same game. Honestly I think if you approach the game more like a light gun game with more freedom of movement, rather than treating it like a 3rd-person or FPS action game, it puts you much more in the proper mindset to approach the game.

I love Doom, but not to the extent that I'd ever get a Doom tattoo. In fact, for the longest time, I didn't think I'd ever get any tattoos, then an ex talked me into one (which she paid for), so I got a tattoo of Yggdrasil, the Norse tree of life, on my back (not big into Norse mythology, but I like the concept of a tree that binds the universe together - kinda gels well with my own personal philosophy of life).

Oh... my... God!!! Someone finished my E1M6!!! Sorry, sorry, didn't mean to get so excited, but man, it's so awesome to see my baby fully realized. I mean, I can't even remember how long ago it was that I started on that, got halfway done, got mapper's block, life got in the way, years and years passed, I let it languish, I thought it would never be complete, but I just happened to load up Freedoom today and there it was, monsters and everything. Oh geez, that just... I mean, getting to see that level completed... Getting to actually play through it. I realize, looking back, that I made some very questionable design choices back then, and my mapping style has gotten a touch more refined since then, but geez... you know, there just really aren't words to describe how it feels to see something that you started actually make it to completion. It always bummed me out that I was never able to finish it, I mean, there were some ideas I had in it that I really liked, and every so often I'd be like, "Geez, this would've been so cool if I had ever finished it," and there it is. Just wanna say, from the bottom of my heart, thank you to whoever picked up my slack and made something of that mess I started.

I figured there was a trick to the yellow key. I'm gonna give the map another go at some point. Thanks for the offer, but I don't think I can touch it again - literally, the last time I touched that map was something like 10 years ago, so it'd feel weird. God, I can't believe it's been that long.

Oh, hey... Yeah, sorry, I am not at all used the layout of how everything is organized, so I tried to find credits, but I failed miserably. Dude, seriously, you rock. Major props. Again, totally awesome to see something that I had started actually get finished, and I really like what you did with it (though for the life of me I could not figure out how to get the yellow keycard - so I cheated slightly so I could see the whole level).

I kinda wonder how much one person, even one as powerful as Hitler, truly has over the course of history. That isn't to say a single person can't make a difference. However, the Nazi political movement was already in full force. We weren't just at war with Hitler, we were at war with the Nazi ideology. That's a bigger concept than most people can comfortably wrap their minds around. Hitler made a good face for the ideology, though - it's much easier to say that you oppose a person than the system which he represents. So I dunno, maybe it would've made a difference, maybe it would've demoralized the Nazi leadership, but I feel like WWII still would have happened.

Real life can be a distraction, I haven't really been "feeling it" lately, and even when I do sit down and fire up the old Doom Builder, oftentimes I'll just sit there staring at a blank grid because I can't think of any ideas. Or I might draw one room, work on detailing it, then have absolutely no idea what to do with it. That's what happened to me the last time I really got gung ho about mapping - I was just like, "Well crap, now what?" I kept trying to start adding a second room, or a hallway, or anything, but I didn't like the ideas I tried, and I couldn't think of what it was that I really wanted to do, so I just let that room languish. That really kinda got me discouraged from trying again. Not that I've ever been much of a mapper, anyway, I think I've only ever released 4 maps, not counting a speedmapping session I participated in and one map I contributed to Freedoom (I had actually started a second map for Freedoom, didn't even get it halfway done though, can't remember if I ever submitted what I had as a placeholder or not, though). EDIT: Oh, turns out I had submitted what I had finished as a placeholder, and someone else finished it. Ha! That's awesome!

Honestly, I hate to say it, but I think Facebook went a long way to establishing that fact in many people's minds. I mean suddenly, tons of people who weren't used to communicating in an Internet setting were using Facebook - and a lot of people have learned the hard way that simply because you're using a different means of communication than the traditional ones, that doesn't mean there aren't consequences for saying something stupid. You know, you go from these people just being usernames on a screen to, "Oh my God my parents saw those pictures of me getting shitfaced at that party." And I mean, beyond making people realize there are real-world consequences for their actions on the Internet, because those interactions are with real people, you also have a second subset who just never saw any value in it before, thinking that it's nothing but a bunch of basement-dwelling nerds arguing over comic books or something. Suddenly many more of those people are seeing that no, the Internet is just another communication tool, and to gripe about it is like griping that the telephone means no one ever writes letters anymore (though then again, there are those who still do).

The first time I played Doom was '96 or '97, my dad had seen someone playing it at work and had me look it up. I had never really played an FPS before, despite the fact that they'd been around for a while at that point, and honestly, very few 3D games in general, aside from the odd flight simulator like Jet Fighter II (God that takes me back). I was friggin' blown away by this realistic, 3D environment. It was creepy, it was intriguing... I remember the outdoor areas especially just blew me away - the first time seeing that courtyard in E1M1 and being like, "Man, it'd be so cool if I could actually get out there," and then later I found out you could. The monsters were all creepy, the guns were awesome, it was just a blast. And at that same time, I discovered that the game could be modded. Just having the shareware, I couldn't actually try any mods, but just the thought of what you could do with it blew my mind. Just thinking, "Anything I can think of, I could create, and put it in the game." New levels, designing my own worlds, replacing enemies, weapons, etc... More or less, everything I had hoped for in terms of what 3D could allow, sculpting new worlds from scratch. So yeah, it wasn't just, "Hey, this is a really cool new game," it was, "My God, the things I could do with this."

Me? Never. Hookups with exes, maybe, but that doesn't really count because even though the outcome is similar, there's a history there that makes it different. Honestly, I'm not sure I could get casual hookups if I tried, I'm kind of a loser that way, and it's not anything I'd want anything because I desire an actual relationship - the sex is just an added bonus, but if there's no real relationship there, you might as well just be jacking off.

Well let's see... My original dream game would've been a Ghostbusters video game, but that already got made. Though then again, my game would've been different - rather than following a strict plot, I was thinking of more of an open-world type game where you took calls and then got to drive out in the Ecto-1 to bust ghosts, or just cruise the city looking for ghosts. And then you'd take the money you earned to invest in new equipment. Figured maybe you could throw in an overarching story, but not really have it be mandatory, so you could just focus on random hauntings if you wanted to. Then there was my idea for a game where you're stranded on a desert island, having to gather resources, construct shelter and weapons, hunt and/or defend yourself from wild animals, and eventually construct a boat to escape the island. Then Minecraft got released, which was basically a more polished version of that idea. The only thing I have left would be an open-world RPG-style Doom game. You'd go around, clearing out places of hordes of demons, finding new weapons and gear, dealing with different variations of the classic monsters... I guess you could say that Borderlands is that game, but this one I'm sticking to as being my dream game, because I want something along those lines but actually set in the Doom universe.

I have a couple of thoughts regarding generalizations. The first was something that was drilled into my head when I decided to major in psychology in college. The very heart of psychology is doing group studies to understand how the mind operates. However, one of the most important things you learn is that you can't use the generalizations you learn to make predictions about any one individual, and you can't use any one individual to make predictions about a group. Individuals are still individuals, with their own thoughts and feelings, regardless of what groups they belong to, and differences between individuals within a group are always going to be greater than average differences between groups. For example, let's say you have two groups, Group A and Group B, and the average height of Group A is two inches taller than the average height of Group B. This is a general pattern, but if you just pick people at random, you may have one person from group A be 5 inches shorter than the average, and another be 7 inches above the average. Likewise, if you pick a person at random from each group, there's no guarantee that the person from Group A will be taller than the person from Group B, even if the averages are different. The second issue I have with generalizations is more personal. I just don't often find myself identifying fully with groups I'm lumped into. I've never really identified with groups, I've always considered myself something of an outsider, and partly because of that, I always prefer to be identified by my differences from the group rather than the ways I fit in. It's just my mode of thinking - I'd rather be dealt with as an individual, with my own thoughts and feelings. Finally, it's funny you should mention, because I was having a discussion the other day about the fact that not all Nazis were monsters. Not that I don't believe Nazis should be demonized, but it's an interesting perspective to realize that not everyone in the Nazi party was fully on board with what was going on, and some were, in fact, quite horrified with the actions of the party. Of course, I'm not going to pretend like it wasn't horrible, and that it was horrible that so many went along with it, but it is something to keep in mind, that even some of the people who went along with it did not do so because they themselves were horrible people, or that they thought genocide was okay. It's just one of those unfortunate things where the desires of the group can override the desires of the individual, and it can be a very difficult thing for individuals to oppose the group when that occurs. It's one of the dangers of putting a group label ahead of the individual - it has power over the individual, and it strips people of their individual identity, which in itself can be a horrible thing.

On the subject of survivors struggling with a zombie apocalypse, that's one thing I liked about Zombieland - the main characters did get better at killing zombies, to the point where by the end, they were badass zombie-killing machines. That really made a lot more sense than most zombie movies (and TV shows) wherein the characters never seem to be any better at dealing with the situation than they were at the beginning. As for the question of how zombies remain functional, I've always had this idea that, to my knowledge, has never been done, of a technological zombie outbreak - nanotechnology infects the zombies, Borg-like, and gradually takes over the vital systems and operations of the host's body. The nanobots could keep cellular decay to a minimum and/or augment and support the body as it gradually fell apart. The need to eat is to serve as fuel for the nanobots, so that they don't start breaking down the host's cells for fuel, and you could even have the added horror of having the person still have a functioning brain and remain conscious but unable to control their own bodies, Half-Life style. I dunno, maybe the idea is silly and that's why I've never seen it implemented, but if I were to create a fictional explanation for zombies, that's the route I'd take.

I wonder how the economy would fare if all illegal immigrants were suddenly granted a path to citizenship. After all, a driving force behind illegal immigrants is that they make for cheap labor, and because of their illegal status, they have little room to complain about their wages or working conditions. The agriculture industry in particular might actually be hurt by a path to citizenship - suddenly they'd have to start paying better wages to the immigrants they hire to work the fields. It's funny... no one will say they're in favor of illegal immigrants, but many profit from the underground workforce they create.

Makes me wonder, presumably someone could write up a renderer to actually make a source port of Quake that would work this way on a PC, maybe without the flickering, though. 'Cause damn, that would be sweet.

Wait, here we go, I've actually found something definitive on the issue of Gentiles and the Old Testament. Acts 15:28-29 (NIV) "28 It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: 29 You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell." So it would seem to me that this is specifically stating that most of the Old Testament doesn't really count, at least for Gentiles. For context, Acts 15 on the whole is a discussion the issue of whether or not the Gentiles had to follow the Old Testament. Acts 15:28-29 is the conclusion of that discussion. Again, I'm an atheist, so none of it really applies to me, but this to me is a pretty clear statement that parts of the Old Testament don't apply to Christians. So the Bible itself is telling people to pick and choose, even if earlier parts of it specifically stated that you can't pick and choose. Which just gets into my point that the notion of adhering to everything is absurd, and no one should be expected to, because again, parts of the Bible contradict other parts, and so literally no one can adhere to everything, and thus, with that requirement, Christianity would be meaningless.

Except it's true - if you're a Gentile, Jewish law doesn't apply to you. I realize this gets even more into the Bible contradicting itself, but it does establish in the New Testament that Gentiles can be Christian. And by definition, Gentiles are not bound by Jewish law - otherwise, Gentiles would have had to convert to Judaism before converting to Christianity. In fact, the whole "Gentiles can be Christian" thing is the whole basis for saying that the Old Testament does not apply to Christians.

I dunno, I mean, I still look at it as that the Bible is so full of plot holes (to use a grossly inappropriate term for what is supposedly a true story) and contradictions, that I kinda feel anyone should be free to pick and choose. No one can follow everything, which granted, is part of the reason I'm an atheist in the first place, but honestly, I feel if you admit that fact, then you should be absolutely free to pick and choose. And after all, since from my perspective none of it is true anyway, I really see no harm in cherry-picking the stories that actually have meaning and importance to you and leaving everything else out. My only real gripe is I wish more Christians would recognize that fact, and quit trying to pretend that they're following every rule laid down in the Bible to the letter. Maybe it doesn't make them Christians, but hey, if anyone who doesn't follow the whole Bible to the letter is not a Christian, then there's no such thing as a Christian. And again, if you're going to follow a broken religion like that, you might as well pick and choose, because what's the harm in picking and choosing if the religion itself is fundamentally broken? After all, it only really matters if Christianity really is the one true religion, and following every tenet of it is necessary for salvation. But, the Bible is so fundamentally screwed up, I'd imagine that if Christianity really were the one true religion, God would probably give a free pass to anyone who just tried to follow it and tried to be a good person, regardless if they didn't follow every tiny little thing in it. And if following every damn little thing in the Bible is necessary for salvation, well who gives a crap because no one's getting into heaven anyway, so you might as well just do whatever the hell you want. Ultimately, it all boils down to the fact that I just can't see a good reason for following a strict interpretation of the Bible. Either it's made up and there is no heaven/hell, God's gonna give everyone a pass who at least tried, or you're going to hell no matter how hard you try because it's impossible to get every little thing right. There really is no plus side to accepting a strict interpretation of the Bible that I can see.

To answer the question about harassment and whatnot, I think it's best to look at it in terms of how people tend to operate. We tend to categorize everything into "us" and "them," the self vs. the other. It's not inevitable, not everyone does this all the time, so don't take it personally or anything, it's just on the whole, that's how humanity operates. It's believed to stem from our evolutionary past, when it was vital to differentiate between members of the tribe and strangers who could pose a threat to your resources. After all, we need to work together to function, but at the same time, we can't let people take things without contributing. The thing is, it's been shown over and over that the best way to combat prejudice against a minority is through repeated exposure to that minority. That exposure helps break down the barrier, to allow members of a minority to no longer be seen as "other." In that sense, then, having things to recognize minorities can be very helpful for people with little exposure to those minorities. It doesn't result in instant change, but it has a cumulative effect over time. Now, there is a limit to this - try to be too direct, coming across like you're rubbing it in their faces, and that can provoke a hostile reaction and get the person to shut down and not consider other viewpoints. But for instance, attitudes toward gay people have greatly changed in the US partly because of more exposure. Friends and family members have felt more secure coming out of the closet, and celebrities have been more open, so that it starts to be a little less theoretical and a little more like an issue that actually affects people you know. So basically, over time, exposure to different minorities increases, to the point where those people are seen less and less like the "other," and eventually calling attention to the minority becomes unnecessary. A few months ago I actually read a very interesting article on the history of gay bars in San Francisco, and about how that scene is kind of dying because as gays have received more mainstream acceptance, the necessity for having gay bars and clubs has greatly decreased. So there's one example where it's actually kind of playing out already.

I, for one, am not anticipating Starfox U at all - it would mean I'd finally have to break down and buy a Wii U. I'm trying desperately to resist, and they've already released Mario Kart and Smash Bros... Throw in Mario Maker, Zelda, and Starfox, and gah, it's just too much to take. Actually, when you get down to it, I think that's my tipping point on any new console - five must-own games. That's enough that, even if no other must-own games ever get released, you've still got plenty to keep you entertained, and there will almost certainly be more must-own games released down the line.