OMG. I have so been wishing to see such a thing. NiGHTS was easily one of the best games on the Saturn (up there with Virtual On, which I never had the joy of owning), and the Gamecube could do a sequel so much justice. I have to wonder if the idea has been tossed around inside Sega, because they need to do it.
Damnit! I accidentally left the wrong link in the original paragraph. I meant to include the Economist link, but I was submitting this to Plastic.com and Slashdot both, and managed to cut and paste the wrong part from Plastic here... *sigh*
If anyone cares, the link to Plastic wasn't what was intended and can be safely ignored.
Sega's not making exclusives only for the XBox. Monkey Ball, anyone? Both were exclusive to the Gamecube, and big sellers also. Interesting that the company would choose to make exclusive titles for separate systems.
And I so wish they had released Jey Set Radio Future non-exclusively, as I would have so bought that for my Cube already.
The article specifically mentioned that none of the Atari consoles would be included because they had potential.
The Jaguar wasn't a spectacular failure at all - it didn't have the ridiculous price of the Halcyon or 3DO, and wasn't a screwy concept like the 32X or Virtual Boy. It was just a flop due to poor managment, lack of dev tools, mostly bad in-house games, and bad third party support.
The console itself wasn't a bad idea, thus it didn't qualify for the list.
It was omitted from the list because it wasn't a DISMAL failure. It failed, sure, due to being tough to program for, because Jack Tramiel had no right running a company, and because all the Japanese console fanboys attacked it from the start (usually by straight out lying, such as claiming it wasn't really a 64-bit system, though the magazines were guilty of this too).
It didn't help that the inclusion of a 16-bit 68000 meant as a simple general purpose chip to do little things encouraged companies to port their 16-bit games to the system using mainly that chip without attempts to even improve the game. (Flashback, anyone?)
The existence of the 3DO at the same time, with it's $700 price-tag, compared to the $250 Jaguar, helped make the Jag look like the more viable of the two - which I believe it was.
I wonder what kind of games we might have seen if the system had survived long enough for programmers to push it to the limit - probably some impressive stuff. After all, T2K came out really darn quick, and it is still visually impressive in many ways. (Maybe that's just the extreme trippiness of the game...)
Parsec the best? I don't know if I'd go that far, thought it was definitely up there. Plenty of time wasted on it, along side hours and hours on Tunnels of Doom, along with a really cool and for some reason extra-fun Missile Command knockoff called Barrage...
Darn, I miss my TI computer. Though I can gladly say I'd finished all of the first twelve Scott Adams' Adventure games, and made quite a few of my own.
OMG - the scene with the bathtub REALLY freaked me out. I immediately went and turned on the lights, and stopped playing for the night after that. I don't think a video game has EVER scared me like that, and that includes Doom and Quake which were pretty damn scary at times (Quake moreso with the music playing).
I actually don't play the "mature" games that everyone raves about (and I agree with another post near here about how our definition of "mature" is a little blurred in this context). I go for playability over blood content for the most part.
One of the Mature games on the system ranks in the top games for the Cube. Eternal Darkness is rated Mature, for good reason - not just the blood and chopping zombies in half, but for an atmosphere and storyline that contribute to the horror theme VERY well, including the insanity effects. (Yes, you can go insane, and it's extremely well done).
I had a few nights with trouble sleeping at first because of the game, and I've watched friends scoot back about 10 feet along the floor, and others that refuse to watch it because of how scary it can be. And we're talking a group of people in their mid twenties. (Of course, my other half would go and pop popcorn and watch me play like watching a movie)
One other thing: has anyone noticed how quickly Nintendo's Gamecube games start?
The first time I watched Smash Bros. Melee load up when my friend brought over her Gamecube, I was in shock! The loading times were pretty damn short. Then I realized that it's partially due to the programming - I saw only short loading times on Monkey Ball, Smash Bros, Eternal Darkness, Animal Crossing, Metroid.
Then I got Tony Hawk 4, which has loading times to match PS2 games - making me suspect it's just lazy programming, or a little too quick of a port from the PS2 version (amusingly, the instruction book, above the image of the Gamecube controller showing the buttons, has the text "Dualshock 2 Controller" - oops!
It's not like the blood, zombies, insanity effects, and the setup in Eternal Darkness is meant for adults with it's Mature rating and all that. It's perfect for 10 year old kids, who surely won't be scared by a game that forced me to turn the lights on every hour or so, caused one friend of mine to drop the controller, scoot back across the floor about 10 feet, and make her refuse to play for the rest of the day. Heck, the fact that my father and his wife stop playing after a few hours because it starts to get to them surely means a kid will be FINE with the game.
The Gamecube is by Nintendo, which has a reputation of aiming at kids, and only at kids. It's just not true anymore - Eternal Darkness, the Resident Evil series, BMX XXX (which isn't just a PS2 game), etc. Even the games which are quite safe for young kids do well because of QUALITY GAMEPLAY - Animal Crossing, which is as kid friendly as a G movie, has probably just as many older gamers playing it as kids, because it's solidly done.
Sure, if you want a system for kids, the Gamecube is the safest one. That doesn't mean the other systems have better games - I don't think the X-Box has anything other than Halo that it can lord over the Cube, for example.
This really scares me - that the head of a decent group such as the HRC would be in a relationship with someone like Rosen. I thought us lesbians had more sense than this.
It was completely unnecessary to go to an overlay area code. There was tons of evidence that fully half of the available phone numbers were unused at the time, just had been allocated somewhere due to allocation schemes that were in use, and nobody wanted to give up any numbers.
So instead, we have 11 digit dialing. (Yes, 11 digit - you CANNOT skip dialing the 1 for some idiotic reason, but then again, SBC/Ameritech is not known for having any more intelligence than a bag of rocks)
I can't believe no one has mentioned Robert Jordans Wheel of Crack.....errrr Time series. That'll keep you going for a while reading all 10 of the books in the series.
I can't believe it either - especially since it's not true. In fact, there have already been, say, 50 people recommending that series. Though given that the person who submitted the Ask Slashdot question has over 4000 books in the Sci-Fi and Fantasy areas, it seems almost braindead to assume he doesn't have them. (or LOTR, or Eddings, or Neal Stephenson, or Gibson, or numerous well known fantasy and sci-fi books)
Sorry, I just don't get how SO MANY PEOPLE can recommend the same books over and over again, as if they didn't take a minute or two to scan the comments.
(Though with people mentioning just about every fantasy series known to humankind, I'm suprised nobody's at least mentioned the (admittedly not new) Swords series by Fred Saberhagen, just for additional completeness)
Well, don't read more than one series unless you like reading about the same plot, and similar characters, over and over again.
They're definitely not cerebral books - simple and fun, though if you stick to the Belgariad, Mallorean, and the books on Belgarath and Polgara, and head somewhere else from there, then you'll minimize repetition by sticking with the biggest series of his.
it is important to realize that people are stupid. I mean really _really_ stupid.
I don't know if I'd go as far as to say that people are stupid. There's ill-informed, ignorant, apathetic, selfish, mean-spirited, and so on, but not necessarily stupid.
I am slowly starting to think that Democracy has a very fundamental flaw - that the people as a whole are not able to make decisions that are in their best interest. Perhaps they are unwilling to spend the time to learn about everything, unable to get the information, or unaware of what their best interests are.
Unfortunately, I offer no better alternative ideas for government.
Well, it is not the kids that were doing the whole "peace and love" thing that are the ones running the businesses and pushing for tighter copyrights and such. It's the ones that spent all of that time in stuffy schools learning about why capitalism is the greatest economic system there ever was and ever will be, and how to break capitalism to make more money...
Atheism : Faith that there are no gods (or equivalent supernatural beings). Agnostic : no religion, on account of no faith.
I told you it would become about definitions.
The traditional definition of agnostic (see here) as coined by Thomas Henry Huxley is that anything that has no facts in support or against is classified as "unknown", and those which can never have such facts are assignes as unknowable. "That it is wrong for a man to say he is certain of the objective truth of a proposition unless he can provide evidence which logically justifies that certainty."
When applied to religion specifically, an agnostic is one who believes that the existence and nature of god is unknown, and likely unknowable.
However, it says nothing of what an agnostic believes - you can be agnostic, yet believe or disbelieve in various gods.
And it is not true that an atheist is someone who actively disbelieves in gods. (see the Introduction to Atheism) You may feel that's what the word SHOULD mean, but the fact is that there are many people out there who consider themselves atheist who do not actively believe gods. Such as myself. Which means you have to deal with the term in that manner - just as there are plenty of people who consider themselves Christian who I'm sure you feel are not Christian.
Religion isn't "what do you think the things out there are like?", it's "what do you think is out there?." Atheism is a religion, and should be given no more political or scientific respect than any other.
*sigh* - I'm not going to argue this much because I know how much hinges on the definition people use for the words "religion" and "atheism". To some people, anything you believe constitutes religion, and to others, only clear, spelled out systems of belief involving the supernatural constitute a religion.
Similarly, some people equate atheism with denial of all gods, others with just a lack of a belief in any of them. There is a distinct difference between saying something DOESN'T exist, and lacking belief either way.
And clearly you define the terms in completely different ways, so any discussion is going to get us nowhere.
Blindly accepting science as "truth" is definitely religion - and completely opposite what science is, since it's a continual process of discovery and learning. But don't let the fact that some people do this suggest that all of science is that bad. And because some people who don't believe in god worship science doesn't mean that all people who are atheist are that way.
There's a difference between "scientific knowledge" and the religon atheists call "science."
Bullshit - no matter how you try to dress it, calling atheism a religion is completely untrue. Just because it deals with topics normally considered "religious", doesn't make science a religion. Someone can posit a theory about how the universe came into existence without it being religious - the evidence for the Big Bang theory continues to mount.
Sadly, scientists and the common man differ greatly on this. Science as a whole might be a whole bunch better if they started issuing press releases with all of the proper disclaimers ("this science is only 6 months old, it may be overturned in a week") and media people (jounralists) spent a bit more time hammering home that point.
It's a sad statement of the level of science education in this country that most people don't realize that this is ALWAYS the case with science. There's no such thing as a "fundamental truth" - just working theories that have various levels of accuracy. For example, classical mechanics was pretty accurate, but not for all possible conditions, thus quantum mechanics came along for more details. Surely other things we take for granted will be changed slightly also - such as gravity.
When I buy a game for my kid's Gamecube, I don't have to worry to much about it. I don't need to worry about GTA-3 showing up in Nintendo land. I haven't yet (NOTE: I said YET) seen a game with obvious gore. (No, I don't have Perfect Dark, or games like that, so I don't know what the gore factor is there).
Just don't buy your kids Eternal Darkness, if you're worried about gore. There are plenty of zombies that can be hacked up, so it does get a bit gory.
However, the gore is second to the fact that this game is very successful at creating a scary, creepy environment. I had a few moments freaking out in the dark after playing it for a while - and I'm in my late 20's. I would play it in the dark, and have to stop every few hours, turn on the lights, and relax, to avoid getting too creeped out by it.
It would give younger kids nightmares, no doubt.
So much for everything being kid-friendly.
(BTW, it is an incredibly good game, and not just about shock value)
The fact is, nothing can replace the periodical burning of the forests. Fires are a natural part of the ecosystem, and it was a horrible policy to prevent them from burning. That's the direct cause of these huge inferno wildfires that have been occuring recently.
Logging can't and doesn't replace this - fire is not just about killing trees. The whole process is needed - burning the plants and leaving the remains around. It might even help make the soil better for growth - after a fire, the area springs back to life VERY quickly. There are even trees where the cones don't open until they've been scorched by fire.
Yes, fires do affect people - maybe if they stopped building homes in the middle of forests, it might not be as bad of a problem. I just can't bring myself to feel bad for someone who builds a house in the middle of the forest, and then watches it burn down - just like someone who builds a home in a flood plain, then watches it fill with water. You knew it could happen, you took the chance, you lost. Deal with it.
It's amazing how many people bring up the whole "it's their private property" line, without realizing that their loggins has demonstratably affected other peoples' private property, along with public property.
The fishing in the area has been hurt because of all the mud that's been washed into the rivers because the trees aren't there to keep it from eroding. There's also the fact that Eureka is now flooding more often because the watershed can't buffer the large storms. People's houses and businesses are being flooded. OTHER peoples' private property is being destroyed.
Or is tresspassing a much worse offense than the destruction of property?
It's amazing how many environmentalists don't know that trees grow back if you plant some new ones...
So, step one, chop down 3500-year old redwood. Step two, plant seedling. Step three, celebrate because that single seedling replaces that 3500-year old redwood perfectly.
Or maybe it's like... step one, clearcut land. Step two, watch huge mudslides occur. Step three, attempt to replant seedlings on land that is now devoid of topsoil, only to have most of them die. Step four, watch the topsoil collect in the local watershed, destroying the ecosystem for the fish. Step five, watch numerous fishermen find themselves unemployed as the fish population dwindles. Step six, watch local towns flood as the watershed is unable to buffer rain from huge storms.
It's amazing how many people don't know that planting a bunch of seedlings cannot even come close to replacing a clearcut - and that many clearcuts don't just simply "grow back" in a few years, but become sparse, barren landscapes that probably take hundreds, if not thousands, of years to return to their original state.
Oh well, someone made a few bucks, the consequences aren't important, now are they?
Instead of sitting in a tree looking stupid, how about trying to propose some sort of meaningfull legislation.
Read Remedy's log. You'll see that she mentions:
That MAXXAM/Pacific Lumber is allowed to proceed with their destruction-as-usual, after over 300 violations connected to the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Forest Practices Act, is nothing short of criminal.
Why should the protesters bother trying to get more legislation passed when the logging company doesn't even bother to comply with existing ones, and doesn't suffer for it? There was even an injunction against this specific logging company, preventing them from logging in the area she's tree-sitting in - of course, she'd never know by watching the company log away.
Don't tell people "why don't you go to THIS instead", when they've already done that, and it didn't work.
Legislation doesn't matter when it's not enforced.
Slashdot Mirror
I want NiGHTS on the Cube. That's all I can say.
OMG. I have so been wishing to see such a thing. NiGHTS was easily one of the best games on the Saturn (up there with Virtual On, which I never had the joy of owning), and the Gamecube could do a sequel so much justice. I have to wonder if the idea has been tossed around inside Sega, because they need to do it.
Damnit! I accidentally left the wrong link in the original paragraph. I meant to include the Economist link, but I was submitting this to Plastic.com and Slashdot both, and managed to cut and paste the wrong part from Plastic here... *sigh*
If anyone cares, the link to Plastic wasn't what was intended and can be safely ignored.
Sega's not making exclusives only for the XBox. Monkey Ball, anyone? Both were exclusive to the Gamecube, and big sellers also. Interesting that the company would choose to make exclusive titles for separate systems.
And I so wish they had released Jey Set Radio Future non-exclusively, as I would have so bought that for my Cube already.
The article specifically mentioned that none of the Atari consoles would be included because they had potential.
The Jaguar wasn't a spectacular failure at all - it didn't have the ridiculous price of the Halcyon or 3DO, and wasn't a screwy concept like the 32X or Virtual Boy. It was just a flop due to poor managment, lack of dev tools, mostly bad in-house games, and bad third party support.
The console itself wasn't a bad idea, thus it didn't qualify for the list.
It was omitted from the list because it wasn't a DISMAL failure. It failed, sure, due to being tough to program for, because Jack Tramiel had no right running a company, and because all the Japanese console fanboys attacked it from the start (usually by straight out lying, such as claiming it wasn't really a 64-bit system, though the magazines were guilty of this too).
It didn't help that the inclusion of a 16-bit 68000 meant as a simple general purpose chip to do little things encouraged companies to port their 16-bit games to the system using mainly that chip without attempts to even improve the game. (Flashback, anyone?)
The existence of the 3DO at the same time, with it's $700 price-tag, compared to the $250 Jaguar, helped make the Jag look like the more viable of the two - which I believe it was.
I wonder what kind of games we might have seen if the system had survived long enough for programmers to push it to the limit - probably some impressive stuff. After all, T2K came out really darn quick, and it is still visually impressive in many ways. (Maybe that's just the extreme trippiness of the game...)
Parsec the best? I don't know if I'd go that far, thought it was definitely up there. Plenty of time wasted on it, along side hours and hours on Tunnels of Doom, along with a really cool and for some reason extra-fun Missile Command knockoff called Barrage...
Darn, I miss my TI computer. Though I can gladly say I'd finished all of the first twelve Scott Adams' Adventure games, and made quite a few of my own.
OMG - the scene with the bathtub REALLY freaked me out. I immediately went and turned on the lights, and stopped playing for the night after that. I don't think a video game has EVER scared me like that, and that includes Doom and Quake which were pretty damn scary at times (Quake moreso with the music playing).
I actually don't play the "mature" games that everyone raves about (and I agree with another post near here about how our definition of "mature" is a little blurred in this context). I go for playability over blood content for the most part.
One of the Mature games on the system ranks in the top games for the Cube. Eternal Darkness is rated Mature, for good reason - not just the blood and chopping zombies in half, but for an atmosphere and storyline that contribute to the horror theme VERY well, including the insanity effects. (Yes, you can go insane, and it's extremely well done).
I had a few nights with trouble sleeping at first because of the game, and I've watched friends scoot back about 10 feet along the floor, and others that refuse to watch it because of how scary it can be. And we're talking a group of people in their mid twenties. (Of course, my other half would go and pop popcorn and watch me play like watching a movie)
One other thing: has anyone noticed how quickly Nintendo's Gamecube games start?
The first time I watched Smash Bros. Melee load up when my friend brought over her Gamecube, I was in shock! The loading times were pretty damn short. Then I realized that it's partially due to the programming - I saw only short loading times on Monkey Ball, Smash Bros, Eternal Darkness, Animal Crossing, Metroid.
Then I got Tony Hawk 4, which has loading times to match PS2 games - making me suspect it's just lazy programming, or a little too quick of a port from the PS2 version (amusingly, the instruction book, above the image of the Gamecube controller showing the buttons, has the text "Dualshock 2 Controller" - oops!
You want games for kids, buy a GameCube.
Sure, of course.
It's not like the blood, zombies, insanity effects, and the setup in Eternal Darkness is meant for adults with it's Mature rating and all that. It's perfect for 10 year old kids, who surely won't be scared by a game that forced me to turn the lights on every hour or so, caused one friend of mine to drop the controller, scoot back across the floor about 10 feet, and make her refuse to play for the rest of the day. Heck, the fact that my father and his wife stop playing after a few hours because it starts to get to them surely means a kid will be FINE with the game.
The Gamecube is by Nintendo, which has a reputation of aiming at kids, and only at kids. It's just not true anymore - Eternal Darkness, the Resident Evil series, BMX XXX (which isn't just a PS2 game), etc. Even the games which are quite safe for young kids do well because of QUALITY GAMEPLAY - Animal Crossing, which is as kid friendly as a G movie, has probably just as many older gamers playing it as kids, because it's solidly done.
Sure, if you want a system for kids, the Gamecube is the safest one. That doesn't mean the other systems have better games - I don't think the X-Box has anything other than Halo that it can lord over the Cube, for example.
This really scares me - that the head of a decent group such as the HRC would be in a relationship with someone like Rosen. I thought us lesbians had more sense than this.
The worst part of it in Chicago at least?
It was completely unnecessary to go to an overlay area code. There was tons of evidence that fully half of the available phone numbers were unused at the time, just had been allocated somewhere due to allocation schemes that were in use, and nobody wanted to give up any numbers.
So instead, we have 11 digit dialing. (Yes, 11 digit - you CANNOT skip dialing the 1 for some idiotic reason, but then again, SBC/Ameritech is not known for having any more intelligence than a bag of rocks)
I can't believe no one has mentioned Robert Jordans Wheel of Crack.....errrr Time series. That'll keep you going for a while reading all 10 of the books in the series.
I can't believe it either - especially since it's not true. In fact, there have already been, say, 50 people recommending that series. Though given that the person who submitted the Ask Slashdot question has over 4000 books in the Sci-Fi and Fantasy areas, it seems almost braindead to assume he doesn't have them. (or LOTR, or Eddings, or Neal Stephenson, or Gibson, or numerous well known fantasy and sci-fi books)
Sorry, I just don't get how SO MANY PEOPLE can recommend the same books over and over again, as if they didn't take a minute or two to scan the comments.
(Though with people mentioning just about every fantasy series known to humankind, I'm suprised nobody's at least mentioned the (admittedly not new) Swords series by Fred Saberhagen, just for additional completeness)
Well, don't read more than one series unless you like reading about the same plot, and similar characters, over and over again.
They're definitely not cerebral books - simple and fun, though if you stick to the Belgariad, Mallorean, and the books on Belgarath and Polgara, and head somewhere else from there, then you'll minimize repetition by sticking with the biggest series of his.
it is important to realize that people are stupid. I mean really _really_ stupid.
I don't know if I'd go as far as to say that people are stupid. There's ill-informed, ignorant, apathetic, selfish, mean-spirited, and so on, but not necessarily stupid.
I am slowly starting to think that Democracy has a very fundamental flaw - that the people as a whole are not able to make decisions that are in their best interest. Perhaps they are unwilling to spend the time to learn about everything, unable to get the information, or unaware of what their best interests are.
Unfortunately, I offer no better alternative ideas for government.
Well, it is not the kids that were doing the whole "peace and love" thing that are the ones running the businesses and pushing for tighter copyrights and such. It's the ones that spent all of that time in stuffy schools learning about why capitalism is the greatest economic system there ever was and ever will be, and how to break capitalism to make more money...
Atheism : Faith that there are no gods (or equivalent supernatural beings). Agnostic : no religion, on account of no faith.
I told you it would become about definitions.
The traditional definition of agnostic (see here) as coined by Thomas Henry Huxley is that anything that has no facts in support or against is classified as "unknown", and those which can never have such facts are assignes as unknowable. "That it is wrong for a man to say he is certain of the objective truth of a proposition unless he can provide evidence which logically justifies that certainty."
When applied to religion specifically, an agnostic is one who believes that the existence and nature of god is unknown, and likely unknowable.
However, it says nothing of what an agnostic believes - you can be agnostic, yet believe or disbelieve in various gods.
And it is not true that an atheist is someone who actively disbelieves in gods. (see the Introduction to Atheism) You may feel that's what the word SHOULD mean, but the fact is that there are many people out there who consider themselves atheist who do not actively believe gods. Such as myself. Which means you have to deal with the term in that manner - just as there are plenty of people who consider themselves Christian who I'm sure you feel are not Christian.
Religion isn't "what do you think the things out there are like?", it's "what do you think is out there?." Atheism is a religion, and should be given no more political or scientific respect than any other.
*sigh* - I'm not going to argue this much because I know how much hinges on the definition people use for the words "religion" and "atheism". To some people, anything you believe constitutes religion, and to others, only clear, spelled out systems of belief involving the supernatural constitute a religion.
Similarly, some people equate atheism with denial of all gods, others with just a lack of a belief in any of them. There is a distinct difference between saying something DOESN'T exist, and lacking belief either way.
And clearly you define the terms in completely different ways, so any discussion is going to get us nowhere.
Blindly accepting science as "truth" is definitely religion - and completely opposite what science is, since it's a continual process of discovery and learning. But don't let the fact that some people do this suggest that all of science is that bad. And because some people who don't believe in god worship science doesn't mean that all people who are atheist are that way.
There's a difference between "scientific knowledge" and the religon atheists call "science."
Bullshit - no matter how you try to dress it, calling atheism a religion is completely untrue. Just because it deals with topics normally considered "religious", doesn't make science a religion. Someone can posit a theory about how the universe came into existence without it being religious - the evidence for the Big Bang theory continues to mount.
Sadly, scientists and the common man differ greatly on this. Science as a whole might be a whole bunch better if they started issuing press releases with all of the proper disclaimers ("this science is only 6 months old, it may be overturned in a week") and media people (jounralists) spent a bit more time hammering home that point.
It's a sad statement of the level of science education in this country that most people don't realize that this is ALWAYS the case with science. There's no such thing as a "fundamental truth" - just working theories that have various levels of accuracy. For example, classical mechanics was pretty accurate, but not for all possible conditions, thus quantum mechanics came along for more details. Surely other things we take for granted will be changed slightly also - such as gravity.
Super Mario Bros. was the first game to present a world so complex and extensive it had to be mapped to be understood.
Pitfall, anyone?
You had to map it to understand the workings of the tunnels well enough to complete the game in the time limit.
In fact, I didn't think SMB needed to be mapped out due to the world structure.
When I buy a game for my kid's Gamecube, I don't have to worry to much about it. I don't need to worry about GTA-3 showing up in Nintendo land. I haven't yet (NOTE: I said YET) seen a game with obvious gore. (No, I don't have Perfect Dark, or games like that, so I don't know what the gore factor is there).
Just don't buy your kids Eternal Darkness, if you're worried about gore. There are plenty of zombies that can be hacked up, so it does get a bit gory.
However, the gore is second to the fact that this game is very successful at creating a scary, creepy environment. I had a few moments freaking out in the dark after playing it for a while - and I'm in my late 20's. I would play it in the dark, and have to stop every few hours, turn on the lights, and relax, to avoid getting too creeped out by it.
It would give younger kids nightmares, no doubt.
So much for everything being kid-friendly.
(BTW, it is an incredibly good game, and not just about shock value)
The fact is, nothing can replace the periodical burning of the forests. Fires are a natural part of the ecosystem, and it was a horrible policy to prevent them from burning. That's the direct cause of these huge inferno wildfires that have been occuring recently.
Logging can't and doesn't replace this - fire is not just about killing trees. The whole process is needed - burning the plants and leaving the remains around. It might even help make the soil better for growth - after a fire, the area springs back to life VERY quickly. There are even trees where the cones don't open until they've been scorched by fire.
Yes, fires do affect people - maybe if they stopped building homes in the middle of forests, it might not be as bad of a problem. I just can't bring myself to feel bad for someone who builds a house in the middle of the forest, and then watches it burn down - just like someone who builds a home in a flood plain, then watches it fill with water. You knew it could happen, you took the chance, you lost. Deal with it.
It's amazing how many people bring up the whole "it's their private property" line, without realizing that their loggins has demonstratably affected other peoples' private property, along with public property.
The fishing in the area has been hurt because of all the mud that's been washed into the rivers because the trees aren't there to keep it from eroding. There's also the fact that Eureka is now flooding more often because the watershed can't buffer the large storms. People's houses and businesses are being flooded. OTHER peoples' private property is being destroyed.
Or is tresspassing a much worse offense than the destruction of property?
It's amazing how many environmentalists don't know that trees grow back if you plant some new ones...
So, step one, chop down 3500-year old redwood. Step two, plant seedling. Step three, celebrate because that single seedling replaces that 3500-year old redwood perfectly.
Or maybe it's like... step one, clearcut land. Step two, watch huge mudslides occur. Step three, attempt to replant seedlings on land that is now devoid of topsoil, only to have most of them die. Step four, watch the topsoil collect in the local watershed, destroying the ecosystem for the fish. Step five, watch numerous fishermen find themselves unemployed as the fish population dwindles. Step six, watch local towns flood as the watershed is unable to buffer rain from huge storms.
It's amazing how many people don't know that planting a bunch of seedlings cannot even come close to replacing a clearcut - and that many clearcuts don't just simply "grow back" in a few years, but become sparse, barren landscapes that probably take hundreds, if not thousands, of years to return to their original state.
Oh well, someone made a few bucks, the consequences aren't important, now are they?
Read Remedy's log. You'll see that she mentions:
Why should the protesters bother trying to get more legislation passed when the logging company doesn't even bother to comply with existing ones, and doesn't suffer for it? There was even an injunction against this specific logging company, preventing them from logging in the area she's tree-sitting in - of course, she'd never know by watching the company log away.
Don't tell people "why don't you go to THIS instead", when they've already done that, and it didn't work.
Legislation doesn't matter when it's not enforced.