We're Not Down with GOP

Here I am again, blogging early on Friday morning. (Or late on Thursday night, however you prefer to think of it.) Conan's on in the background again - the next to last rerun before he's off the air until he starts on the Tonight Show in June. And in an interesting revelation, announcer Joel Godard apparently won't be going with Conan and the Max Weinberg 7 to LA. He'll be a definite loss to the show, as hilarious as he was. But in an interesting turn, Conan's old sidekick Andy Richter's coming home, taking over Joel's announcer job on the Tonight Show. It makes sense, all things considered - Andy hasn't had much of a career since he left Late Night. (Andy Richter Controls the Universe was great, but Fox didn't give it much of a chance. Quintuplets was pretty awful, he was the only good part of that show. And Andy Barker, P.I. didn't get much of a chance either.) Here's hoping we'll see the return of some classic sidekick days comedy this summer - I'd love to see the return of staring contests and sketches like that.

At any rate, after a month of blogging on love and pop culture, it's time to get political again. The subject this time? The ever-increasing irrelevance of the Republican party as they continue to embarrass themselves in trying to court my generation - the Gen Y crowd the media's caught between lauding and reviling, which tends to be more progressive in thinking. The Republicans, of course, think we're all idiots. (Many of us are, of course - like any generation - but you're not going to make any friends or do anybody any favors by treating an entire generation like a pack of morons.)

It's no secret that a major focus of the party has in recent months been undermining sociopolitical milestones achieved by the Democrats in recent times. Hillary Clinton made it further than any woman running for president to date, and many of her supporters were angry when Obama got the nomination. In swooped the Republicans with Sarah Palin, saying "Sure, she stands for everything Hillary opposed, but you don't care about that! You're angry and stupid, so all you care about is voting for a woman! Why would the actual politics be a factor?" Palin didn't take long to fall from grace, being something of a wreck and a general great example of the kind of person we don't need in high office, poorly vetted as she was in being nothing more than a one-note gimmick attached to the Angry Old Man '08 ticket. As you may recall, I blogged about all the misogyny that entails last fall.

After Palin did her part to lose the Republicans the election and shed even further negative light on their party - which is a challenge unto itself after how terrible George W. Bush and Dick Cheney made them look - they continued down that path with Michael Steele. The Republicans elected him Republican National Committee Chairman shortly after Obama's inauguration as an attempt at: "See? We've got a black leader too! Obama's no big deal!" Of course, politically, Steele's more moderate than most outspoken Republicans these days, which only serves to make him look like little more than a stunt choice to improve the party's image.

And as of late, Louisana governor Bobby Jindal has been pushed forward as a "rising star" of the Republican party. And why? Because he's much more of a hard-line far-right Republican, and more importantly - he's Indian-American. That's all it takes to be a big deal in the party now - firm belief in terrible, regressive far right politics that're only losing relevance, and not being white. They seem to be completely convinced that that's the key to success in the future - undermining Obama by confusing the American people with a non-white political candidate! (And hoping they don't notice that they'd inevitably be espousing the same old terrible rhetoric that the American people are increasingly turning their back on.) Of course, as Jindal's response to Obama's congressional address (Which was a fairly mixed address - not exactly 100% honest, though it was the kind of optimism we really needed to hear, and beautifully orated.) on Tuesday night made clear, obviously nothing was learned from Bush in how he treated the American people. In his response, Jindal criticized government spending on working to provide emergency economic relief, and made some rather outlandish cross-party statements that simply didn't stack-up about government relief in regards to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina relief in Louisiana. (Which isn't something they can foist blame for onto the Democrats.) He approached his response with an extremely clumsy, outright childish tone, talking down to the American people in a voice not unlike that which we'd found grating all through the Bush years. (On the Daily Show, Jon Stewart likened him to trying to sound like Mr. Rogers.) A firm reminder of everything we've been elated to get away from. If Jindal's a "rising star" of the Republican party, they really don't plan on having much of a future.

Steele hasn't been making anything of himself but a novelty at this point either, stating last week that the GOP needs a "hip-hop makeover." Apparently TV, radio, internet, and print ads with a hip-hop theme are going to magically change the way everybody looks at the Republican party. Because it's important to pretend you relate to or represent parts of the country whose interests you've never looked out for - and in fact, outright fucked over on numerous occasions. Steele has, in recent times, also criticized Obama's economic stimulus package as simply being "bling bling." Do you hear that? Yes, that's the sound of America's black populace shaking their heads in embarrassment. (Need I even mention Steele's "slum love" comment?) Steele's basically pandering to incredibly cheesy, tired stereotypes about his own race to appease his political party - which, of course, is openly dominated by the interests of the wealthy and white at the expense of everybody else.

The fact of the matter is, the Republicans don't have a clue how to be relevant to Gen Y, or even in general at this point. These people live in this alternative reality that they personally idealize (Seemingly rooted in the era of Reagan and his 'Reaganomics,' which never worked to begin with.) where nothing will ever change, and we will only continue to run in the same old circles. The Republicans will demonize the Democrats - and everyone else remotely left of far right - and eventually defeat them through accusations of communism and socialism, spending a few years bringing the country down through deregulation and legislation focused on their wealthiest constituents over the general interest and good of the American people. Then the Democrats will get re-elected, clean up their mess, and get torn apart for any and every little misstep, ultimately being harassed until the Republicans either win again or cheat their way through another election. (Even if by a narrow majority, the American people realized who the better choice was in 2000, though it speaks volumes of how easily led people in this country are capable of being when they don't think that Bush did as well as he did, getting the conditions he needed to steal the election.) That we'll somehow continue this cycle without anything changing, ideally, beyond the widespread legislation of morality and consolidation of further power in corporate hands over that of the working populace. (Which also shouldn't be happening in the long run, either, given the widespread movement against these things from younger generations - we're only going to become a more powerful and important political presence as the years pass.)

As the current economic crisis and continual major political shifts we've seen mark American history indicate, the Republicans are dead wrong about making this fantasy world they believe in a reality. Of course, as they've shown continuously in recent months, they think young people are all idiots who can easily be molded into hardcore Republicans with the right faces at the forefront - pushing people like Sarah Palin, Michael Steele, and Bobby Jindal to the forefront as gimmicks more than anything else, saying "Hey, they're not white men! Now you can relate!" Outright insulting to the intelligence of the American people - a consistent trend in their politics as of late as well. They completely miss the point, in their detachment from reality. Their politics are outdated and reprehensible - outright dangerous to the future of this nation. As they made in their recent open praise of Rush Limbaugh in the wake of his announcing that he hoped Obama's efforts to help get the country back on its feet failed, they're more concerned with their disgusting, unsustainable political rhetoric than they are the well being of this nation and its people - let alone the world.

Steele's thinking they can simply give the party a "hip-hop makeover" (When you don't get much less "hip-hop" than Republican) and draw Gen Y voters in droves demonstrates the utter irrelevance of postmodern Republican thinking. George W. Bush helped to sink their party in many regards, having been one of the worst presidents this nation's ever had, and they clearly haven't learned anything from it. It's not their party's image that needs a makeover. It's that their irrelevant, backwards politics need reevaluation and updating - otherwise, the party has no future. And at this point, it'd probably be better for America if the Republican party effectively collapsed. In times like these, what we need is forward-thinking, rather than its reverse. We need leaders willing to be honest with us and respect our intelligence, and politicians not interested in completely screwing over the younger generations in pursuit of their ideals - the politics of the Republican party have hit Gen Y hardest in many capacities, and no "makeover" is going to make us forget that.

Conservative Satire III: How Does I Make Funny?

Well, the debates have been over for a week now. We actually bought a cake this past weekend to celebrate the end of that phase of the election (Along with other things, such as the arrival of seasonal temperatures in North Carolina at long last. Something rare enough that they're well worth celebrating. And personally, I absolutely love cold weather.), though things haven't been any less ugly since. Palin's gone on to start dividing the nation up (After all that rather open bullshit talk about "uniting" America, not unlike what we saw with George W. bush.) into categories of "pro-American" and "anti-American" - "real American," and as Jon Stewart pointed out was implied on the Daily Show recently, "fake American" - wherein the supposed "genuine" "pro-Americans" are essentially ignorant blue collar small town workers, farmers, and soldiers serving in Iraq who support the neo-conservative political agenda as this nation crumbles.

In 2005, Albert Brooks went in search of what made the culture we've seemingly declared war on laugh in Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. More recently Andrea Kalin filmed three Muslim comedians here in the United States in Allah Made Me Funny. Today? Right here? I look into what's being sold as Republican comedy. No doubt you all went out and saw An American Carol over one of these weekends (As that's what I'm blogging about now, several weeks after this blog entry would've been relevant. (Like during the one week when it barely made it into the box office top ten as a huge bomb, before falling out of the top ten entirely.)), David Zucker's "satirical" parable on "those goddamn left-winger commies that've been destroyin' our nation while we had all the power. Sympathize with us!" (Instead of seeing Beverly Hills Chihuahua. After all, who would want to indulge in some mindless fluff with the appealing Piper Perabo to distract themselves from the dire state of things when they should be out laughing at the real enemy? (This part of the post was even more relevant when that movie was still #1 in the box office. Oh well.)) The notion that the film is satire, however, had to be placed in quotations because generally, satire is all about humor through which deeper truth is exposed. The neo-conservative "patriotic" masturbation that the film uses to sell itself is anything but truth, of course. It simply paints a bizarre picture of the sort of alternate reality the rabid Bush-and-McCain-loving minority subscribes to.

Is the film funny? Of course not. Is Zucker himself capable of relevance in the modern world? Considering that he couldn't achieve relevance in the '90s either, not at all. And it might be a bit of a stretch to call him particularly relevant in the '80s as well, as much of a cult following as Airplane! and the Naked Gun movies have. When you get down to it, An American Carol is the latest in a long line of shameful rehashes of Charles Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol, which not only manages to be consistently dishonest and overly aggressive - seemingly out of this inherent neo-conservative victim complex easily observable over this past decade, as they attempt to pass the blame for everything they do on to "the liberals," who've had little real political representation and power during the George W. Bush presidency. (Even after 2006's fantastic congressional sweep, while Bush was made more of a lame duck, congress won't have any real power to change things until we have a stronger non-Republican/moderate/progressive majority in the senate and the current massively corrupt characters polluting the executive branch leave power, having dangerously expanded the capabilities of the executive branch over these past eight years and repeatedly abused that power.) And on top of that, the film is no doubt absolutely insulting to any self-proclaimed conservative who likes to use their brain at all. (Though looking at where we've seen conservative endorsements trending lately too, with Christopher Buckley, General Colin Powell, and more, the intelligent, moderate conservatives aren't getting behind the Republican party so much anymore either.)

The basic premise? Michael Malone (An in no way thinly-veiled representation of documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, played by Kevin "Oh god please pretend I'm my brother" Farley) is out to destroy the 4th of July! Oh no! Those evil liberals can't do that, can they? (Never mind that this was the closest they could come up with to documentaries about the impacts of downsizing on people's lives, the risks of our gun culture, the laundry list of fuck-ups by the Bush administration, the healthcare crisis, and a look at my generation in politics. Clearly all major attacks on American values and in no way in the interests of the American people. Apparently Malone's films are wildly unpopular in An American Carol as well, as opposed to the massive popularity of Moore's documentaries. Someone's struck a nerve.)

Of course they would, Jimmy. They don't love America and seek to improve it by acknowledging and criticizing it's problems. They hate it and would elect Ahmadine- Ahmadine-... Achmed over there in Iran to the White House if they could!

Naturally, it's up to a played-out Charles Dickens parody (The man's probably spun in his grave so much that his bones're a fine powder by now.) led by country star Trace Adkins ("I sing them patriotic songs! How hard can this acting thing be if the lib'ruls do it!?") to teach their Moore-analogue the valuable lesson that you're basically nothing more than an America-hating terrorist if you aren't a neo-conservative - voting Republican in the 21st century is all America boils down to. Also, unfunny things are hilarious. Always. (And also something about "support the troops! Support unnecessary and illegal military conflicts! War is not merely always okay, but always necessary and the greatest thing we can do is a nation!" (Specifically, that the more freedoms and humanity we sacrifice in the name of 'protecting freedom,' the greater we are as a nation. And "SHUT UP, STOP THINKING."))

Yeah, now I'm gonna take the wacky, bold stance by saying that no, I actually don't hate Michael Moore. I'm not going to pretend there isn't some amount of bias in his documentaries - he makes an argument in each of them, after all - but he's trying to create public awareness of issues worth drawing attention to, to use cinema to actually make an effort to give something back to moviegoers and society. That deserves a nod. (Unlike, say, Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed from earlier this year - yes, it does indeed have an ironic double meaning in the title - which is outright intellectually dishonest propaganda, once again trying to bring up the incredibly faulty argument that religion and science are somehow the same thing at their core. Anyone who has a real understanding of what both are knows this to be false - as well as that you do not have to renounce religious faith to pursue a career in the scientific field. You simply have to be intellectually honest enough to acknowledge that these two concepts are in no way the same thing - that you cannot find anything concrete in trying to mix the provable and unprovable.)

Zucker's "proud conservative" notion of "truth" in "satire" doesn't just miss the mark - it simply panders to the lowest common denominator. It's downright insulting to the sensibilities of anyone who does write satire - as I do at times myself - or simply knows how to appreciate good satire.

What exactly makes up the anatomy of a conservative "comedy," you ask? Let's take a look at these "deep truths" An American Carol exposes.

First off, apparently Michael Moore is accurately describable as being a fat man. Apparently this is some deep insight that many have missed out on somewhere along the way. And repeatedly pointing this out - or remarking about body odor (I'd assume this might be some sort of jab at the old stereotype of more left-leaning individuals all being "hippies who never bathe," but frankly, that'd be giving Zucker too much credit.) - equals comedy gold. In the 21st century. What I'm wondering is why they don't just go ahead and give Zucker an Oscar now? I mean, seriously, this is clearly genius cinema. Who would've guessed that Michael Moore wasn't thin? My eyes have been opened!

These "liberals" that Zucker writes about with such vitriol - apparently god hates them. Or so Zucker is telling us in this movie, through George Patton and George Washington. If you don't vote Republican, you're a-goin' to the hell! Quiver in fear, progressives, there's a big magical man in the sky waiting to smite anyone who dares question the neo-conservative ideal status quo - whether you're a homosexual who makes conservatives feel uncomfortable and insecure with the whole idea of love, a Vegan or Vegetarian infringing on our red-blooded American meat-eating ways (And don't get Jonah Goldberg started on organic food - according to his Liberal Fascism book, if you're interested in organic food, you're basically a Nazi.), or anyone who dares to use their brain. (This blogger postulates that liberal use of the Leaf Shield ability would take care of that man in the sky plenty easily.) Also, apparently black people have a conspiracy to make you feel guilty about slavery (And exist as one-dimensional stereotypes fixated on slavery and slavery alone.), lesbians look like hairy men, evil hippie college professors are brainwashing us all (Despite recent studies actually showing that college professors don't tend to have much influence on college students' politics - their peers, on the other hand, do.), leftists are pathetic losers who would've let Hitler win in World War II (Makes one wonder what left-leaning members of our military today would have to say about all this. Especially considering how many Iraq war veterans we've seen return and condemn the Bush administration, instead of shouting "WE LOVE WAR! SEND US BACK NOW PLEASE!" like the neo-conservatives regard them. An especially amusing assertion considering that conservatives weren't in power during World War II.), we've been misrepresenting JFK all along (Apparently he was actually a proud conservative warmonger, whaddaya know?), the ACLU is nothing but a bunch of zombies (As opposed to maybe, just maybe, an organization founded to help protect our civil liberties - the very things we're being told have to be taken away in order to be protected. After all, we can't have "freedom" unless we destroy the rest of the world first so they can't take it away from us instead.), if "Mohammed" or "Hussein" is one of your names you're automatically a terrorist, if you're a pacifist then you wanted the Civil War to never happen (And the film suggests that if not for a conservative rush to war, we'd all be happy slave owners today - downright mindboggling.), and when it comes to feminism? Women are all horrific butch shrews or clueless airheads unless you're fucking them.

In short? Everything intellectually honest, progressive, thoughtful, respectful of one another? All a bunch of evil liberal lies tearing this country down. Racism? Awesome. Women? Get down on your knees. The Middle East, even just in ethnicity? Git them terr'ists! Civil Liberties? We'll tell you what rights you can have! By the way, the second amendment's far more important than the first. Homosexuality? An abomination against god! Not voting Republican? Yer goin' to hell, boy! The Civil War? Justifies all war! We're the ones who ended slavery, not them damn lib'rulz! African Americans? We don't care about history! Shut up! Religion? There's only one true god and he's on OUR side! The environment? It's our planet and we can do whut we want to it to make money!

How do they deliver the important, enlightened, regressive message of neo-conservative talking points? Not through any sort of actual comedy, per se - just having historical figures played by a bunch of far right celebrities smacking the Michael Moore analogue around. He's made out to be nothing more than an effective terrorist himself, as the film childishly screeches that that's all leftists are - we only believe in not just tolerance, but embracing ethnic diversity, gun control, environmental protection, and things like higher education because apparently? We just hate freedom. We hate it a lot.

That's basically all their argument comes down to: "We don't like what you have to say or what you support in trying to make the world a better place, so we're going to make a movie where we beat you up and you somehow see the light as a result after lots of weepy time travel. Also you're fat and you stink, neener neener." It's hard not to take a look at the chickenhawk cast listing either and feel that most of these people probably should never work again - those who've lowered themselves to this dishonest cinematic trash that fails even as a low-brow comedy. Zucker went from Airplane! to a veritable airplane wreck of an end to his career with his more recent films. And many people were cast in the film - like country singer Trace Adkins - who had no place acting to begin with. (But of course you'd almost expect to see a far-right-wing ultra-"patriotic" country star in a film like this, wouldn't you? It's reality living up to stereotypes.) Even Bill O'Reilly had a bit part. And there's no measure of brilliance in a project quite like getting Bill O'Reilly involved - he has one of those no-spin zones and everything! (Last time I checked, though? There seemed to be an awful lot of spin in that particular zone. I guess he broke it somewhere along the way. This is why we can't have nice things.)

The funniest thing about the film itself is its actual claim to be a comedy, when most of it? Soppy one-dimensional attacks on "the liberals," asking without a sense of irony, "Why do they hate our freedom?" Malone gets smacked around on ground zero after September 11th as the film tells you "They've forgotten 9/11! Remember 9/11! Never forget it! Learn nothing from it!" and also "All wars are justified - always. So long as there's a Republican in charge, anyway. Stop asking questions." At its core, again, it's nothing but neo-conservative masturbation and whining about Michael Moore cloaked with a painful amount of melodrama and oversentimentality - comparable to all those exploitative "9/11" CDs conservative country musicians put out in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks.

When the film bombed at the box office? There could only have been one reason, they proclaimed - liberal sabotage. Yes, apparently there was a vast liberal theater conspiracy to make the film fail. That's the only plausible explanation as to why the conservative Disaster Movie/Meet the Spartans could have tanked in theaters. (It's almost as if Americans aren't stupid enough to buy into this shit, and that most of us don't live in the alternative neo-conservative reality! Fancy that.)

Naturally, when the film outdid Religulous on its first weekend, the angry neo-con crowd on the IMDB tried to herald it as some sort of great victory - despite the fact that the film actually opened on far less screens and did better in terms of how many people actually saw the film per screen. (And before too long, Religulous still made more at the box office despite An American Carol opening in three times as many theaters.) Of course, when An American Carol was poorly received and did poorly overall in theaters, they had to start shouting about a "liberal conspiracy" to keep films like that down. (Not unlike the one we saw over Ben Stein's intellectually dishonest Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed back in April.) But however you look at it, they're completely different films with completely different messages - An American Carol is pure, mindless neo-conservative masturbation desperately masquerading as a comedy when it isn't remotely funny, and there's no deep hidden truths revealed by its disgusting attempts at satire. (As such, it's effectively the opposite of satire, railing against the truth and anyone remotely progressive and acting in the name of the greater good for the American people, in the name of invoking 9/11 (Which, like Nazism's Godwin's Law, could really use a describing law of its own at this point.) to justify everything the neo-conservatives have done in tearing this country and the world down these past eight years while attacking those who stand against them as "anti-America." (Just as Sarah Palin outright has in recent public addresses.)

As for Religulous, it pretty much comes down to whether or not you like Bill Maher's approach to humor - I agree with his take on things myself, but I'm not exactly one of those aggressive atheists who spends all their time railing on religion. Religion can be a positive force, depending on how someone shapes themselves with their faith. More often than not, it seems like it isn't - those using religion and religious ideas for negative aspirations, oppression, and hate seem to be much louder than those who simply take away the importance of love, acceptance, and understanding of one another in life from religion. And while Maher is rather harsh on those who are religious, there's something to value in the spirit of his film - the importance of questioning things, as especially in the west, religion is more often than not simply something people are brought up with that they're taught not to question, but simply to accept as some deep universal truth without so much as one iota of actual evidence behind it. But that's faith right there - to accept something unquestioningly without proof. It's in that that faith itself can be dangerous, when people feel the need to define the world as we know it by their faith and push everyone else to agree with their perceived "universal truth," their insecure need for the whole world to believe in their unprovable beliefs. An American Carol is angrily opposed to free-thinking, to opposing the status quo established by neo-conservatives - the film itself decries the truth more Americans are embracing now after eight years of the neo-cons wrecking the nation and getting tapped into the complexities of reality and the complexities of thought and philosophy required to exist in and understand the modern world and the challenges existing within it - especially as we try to make progress as a society. Likewise, Expelled focuses on attacking honest intellectualism by attempting to paint them as close-minded to serious intellectual possibilities and answers to the big questions, when Intelligent Design itself has failed to ever qualify as the serious scientific theory, being completely unfalsifiable. It fails in the basic scientific method, and this crowd wants it to be regarded as a scientific theory when it simply doesn't qualify - to degrade science, the objective, concrete search for the best answers we're actually capable of coming up with from what can be understood and known, in the name of pushing an oppressive, dishonest religious agenda.

Back on topic - in short, An American Carol is a portrait of American politics in pop culture at its most braindead and insulting - it's not satire, it's just neo-conservative elitism (Actual elitism - not the neo-con definition they bandy about where if you live in a city, like to partake in any sort of culture, support education and have pursued one yourself, and are in any way remotely left-leaning, you're somehow looking down your nose at the rest of society. Remember, kids! In the neo-conservative world, all good things are bad! We should all proudly live in squalor and go fight in wars for natural resources for ultra-powerful corporate and political entities while shouting cries of nationalistic pride as the rich get richer and we have no rights or national infrastructure! If you think? the terrorists win.), tooting the horn of proud ignorance - outright masquerading as a comedy from a washed-up director who hasn't been remotely relevant in decades. Of course he'd make a scene when the critics slammed it and nobody went to see it. Hell, given the choice between this and Beverly Hills Chihuahua? I'd go with the talking dogs too. (Not so much that crappy Max Payne video game adaptation from this past weekend, though. When will people learn? Video games do not make good movies.)

Stay tuned next week for my first full-on comedy piece in ages in this year's Halloween short story!

Conservative Satire II: "Women's Health? More like abortion parties!"

One week later and here we are. The final debate has come and gone. Did Obama win yet again, thusly achieving a clean sweep of the debates for the Obama/Biden ticket? I'd say "You bet your patootie he did," but that'd be cloyingly folksy in the same sense as Palin's performance in the vice presidential debate and all of her interviews. (Quick! Have her say something stupid and cute and hope that makes them stop asking questions!) Perhaps as choreographed and insulting as her "say it ain't so, Joe" moment at the debate weeks ago - it's hard not to see her asking Biden if she could call him Joe as having been a setup for that line. (Which sounded terribly unnatural in the context of the debate, having clearly been written beforehand (And whoever wrote it probably thought they were being clever. Wrong.) like everything else she said then.)

Anyway, not unlike the Republican candidate, the debate's paleolithic. (As in it ended nearly 6 hours ago as of my writing this. See how witty I am? Clearly I should be some sort of speech writer or televised pundit. They could ask me questions and I could tell them that no matter what, the Republicans won and the Democrats were clearly weak on everything. It's easy!) Obama was intelligent and level-headed as we'd come to expect, speaking to the American people as though we were all free-thinking adults (What an astonishing idea, eh, Republicans vying for the White House in recent years?) and answering all of Bob Schieffer's questions clearly. From McCain, we got more of the usual insistent distortions, finally throwing the low accusations his campaign ads make at Obama directly. (That was basically the theme of the debate for McCain - rattled as he and his campaign are, it was time to start aggressively attacking Obama while barely retaining his cool (Not something McCain's known for. Not a trait particularly desirable in someone seeking the highest office in the nation.) and throwing every misunderstanding and distortion in the book at him.)

First, there was the Nancy Reagan shout-out with which he opened - coming off as a politically calculated move (Not unlike his remark on Ted Kennedy having been hospitalized on the day of the first debate and stating that he was still in the hospital then, when he'd been released hours earlier and had publicly stated that he was looking forward to the debate that night.) and a general nod to the Reagan-worshiping crowd - an essential "Hey I'm like Reagan too, guys, remember? Remember, guys? Remember? I'm like Reagan! C'mon, vote for me! Coming to your senses like this isn't cool! Remember - Reagan!" (In yet another parenthetical, this is the part of the blog entry where I remind readers that yes, anything people go out of their way to say in a debate can be raked for political meaning - there's rarely anything said during debates like this that isn't calculated. Even wishing someone in the hospital well at that time of all times comes off as political maneuvering more than genuine sentiment. And we've seen McCain open with this in two of the three debates now.)

Economics came up as the first topic of debate - McCain once again declaring that the government should buy up everybody's bad mortgages, as unsound a plan as that is for economic recovery on many levels. (Also, we're supposed to freeze taxpayer spending on everything but the military and funnel all our taxes directly into the war coffers and military-industrial complex. In fact, they're intending to do a lot of other things with taxpayer money while also somehow freezing all non-military spending. Also, if the Republicans aren't cool with it? It's pork barrel spending! Like that horrible replacement projector for the Chicago planetarium, as McCain reminded us during the third debate. Spending government money on educational endeavors and public works like museums and planetariums is nothing short of communism! Clearly it's time facilities such as these all became companies and started focusing on the real American dream - making lots of money. And also not caring about anybody who makes less money than you do. Those people are bad. All of them. Terrible. How dare they try to imply you're not poor or middle class if you're making a quarter of a million dollars every year!? Everybody's doing at least that well, right? Damn those greedy liberals and their non-military spending!) Distortions were naturally, inevitably thrown out about Obama's tax plan - the usual Republican mantra about the Democrats scheming to raise taxes during this economic collapse, when under Obama's plan, 95% of Americans actually get tax breaks, while McCain's own plan favors the wealthy and sticks to the usual demonstrably false "trickle down" bullshit. (Remember, "spreading the wealth" is bad! It's our duty as Americans to cheer on our social stratification and ever-increasing class conflict as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer! If you're not rich, you probably deserve to be poor! Income should only be redistributed upwards! Like in recent years. Not the other way around.)

A mysterious "Joe the Plumber" came up as the debate's alternative to "Joe Six-Pack." (Neither of which sound like people you'd want running our government, of course, but don't tell that to the minority of people left who still believe they did the right thing in voting for Bush because "I'd like to have a beer with that man!" The whole "We stupid people can do a better job running this nation than smart people!" rhetoric it entails is pretty depressing, no matter how you look at it. And there's an ironic amount of elitism in it for all they accuse intellectuals of it. Only in America is intelligence now a negative trait for someone to possess. Thanks, neo-conservatives!) From the way he was brought up and used throughout the discussion? He could just as well have been a Republican plant. This average everyday working Joe was planning on buying the business he worked at, which brought in $250,000 a year. This is no small sum of money, as anyone who isn't ridiculously wealthy (See: McCain and the target audience of his definition of the middle class.) knows, and the general idea behind taxes? Paying proportionally - the more money you make, the bigger part of the burden you carry. (An evil liberal scheme, clearly, which extremely wealthy mavericks have had to thwart for great justice by off-shoring as many of their assets as possible and finding any tax loopholes they can to ensure that the burden remains squarely on the shoulders of the lower classes - as it once had the now mostly-gone middle class, which crumbled over the Bush administration years and its economic twists and turns.) And in a nation where employers value their employees? They provide healthcare. This "Joe the Plumber's" business (Decidedly less exciting than that of the Super Mario Bros.) concerns amounted to apparently not being so keen on providing quality healthcare for his employees under the Obama plan - let alone carrying his share of the tax burden as a very successful, wealthier business than most. "Joe the Plumber" was simply no more than a Republican meme (Which I somehow have the feeling we haven't heard the last of, at this point.) to try to prop up an "every day working middle class man" (Who could somehow afford to build a quarter-of-a-million-dollar business. Not exactly middle class.) as a fan of McCain's additional tax breaks for the rich and larger businesses. (Which he likes to call small businesses, while not really doing much to help actual small businesses, not unlike his own version of the "middle class," which isn't actually the middle class.) And as a future business owner who's very interested in slashing healthcare costs and benefits - a terrible trend in the working world in general, part of what's gotten us into this healthcare debacle to begin with - as opposed to doing his part to provide for his employees under Obama's far more effective healthcare plan. (Which also doesn't include taxing individuals for their healthcare benefits for the first time ever, as McCain's does.)

McCain threw out another claim that Obama had never voted against his party and reached across the aisle. Obama responded with three incidents in which he had. In a weak follow-up, McCain shouted that he wasn't Bush in an effort to distance himself again, saying that if Obama wanted to run against Bush, he should've run four years ago. Another rather open declaration of weakness, when McCain's own track record in the Bush years shows him to be very similar to our lame duck president - and he continues to stand by and support Bush, while many of his policies are little more than the continuation of Bush administration policies. (Not successful ones, either.) In short? "Shut up! I'm different!" The facts say otherwise, McCain.

Schieffer changed the subject to the nasty turns the campaigns had taken - McCain's advertising focusing largely on extreme distortions, outright lies, and fearmongering, while the Obama campaign attack ads at least generally have legitimate criticisms going for them. McCain immediately tried to turn the blame for the nasty campaign on Obama for his not agreeing to McCain's town hall meetings over the summer. (As though Obama had pointed a gun at him and forced his campaign to take that route for not going along with them. And for all the talk about those meetings, Obama handled last week's town hall debate far better than McCain did.) Then he went on to insist that he's running a "truthful campaign." (He's not. They can't win on the truth.) Then McCain proceeded to defend his rallies' attendees and attempted to write off those shouting hateful things as merely "the fringe," when that sort of behavior's only become more and more commonplace, and Palin especially has thrived on that sort of terrible behavior. McCain threw out his campaign's usual accusations that Obama's somehow best buddies with William Ayers - a former Man of the Year, professor, and strong community leader, hardly the active domestic terrorist that the McCain campaign's still trying to paint him as. McCain then went on to try to paint Obama's rallies as being just as violent and incendiary. (They're not at all. They lack the same violent and racist fuel that's been drawing so much attention to the Republican candidates' rallies as of late. For being such a tough POW though, apparently all it takes is a t-shirt or two to hurt McCain's feelings. Whaddaya know?) Then he went on to basically claim that Obama was plotting to steal the election with ACORN's help. Obama proceeded to dissect McCain's low blows by coming clean yet again on his relationship with Ayers and that he has nothing to do with his campaign or Obama himself in the White House. And the whole ACORN situation is just a matter of some ACORN employees committing fraud in order to collect a paid commission for their fake registries - not some deep-running Democratic scheme to steal the election from the Republicans. ACORN is actually working to purge all the fraudulent registered names now as well, ultimately failing as a latest campaign attack on the Democrats - ignoring the facts as usual, while they continue to backfire.

I chatted with a friend online while watching the debate, actually, and we couldn't help but muse that it would've only been more entertaining set to a Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (Gyakuten Saiban) DS game soundtrack every time Obama called McCain's bullshit, rattling McCain further. (Yes, we're huge nerds.)

The next topic was the suitability of their running mates for their roles, as well as for the presidency, should something happen. Obama was able to detail Joe Biden's qualifications quite effectively - Biden'll be a great VP, and should the unthinkable happen, he'd no doubt be a fine president too. McCain? Couldn't say too much in favor of Palin - while Obama avoided directly calling her unqualified, simply leaving it to the American people to decide - simply casting her as "someone America knows" (We know Obama by now. They've tried to shield Palin since day one, and the more we learn about her, the less people see her as even remotely qualified - as she isn't.), a role model for women (To call her that is an insult to women. As it was put well in a recent campaign poster parody Photoshop thread about Palin supporters on Something Awful, "Raped? Tough shit."), and a champion for special needs children and families. (Likely only because of her own kid, while McCain himself has a track record of fighting funding for special needs programs - somehow he's expecting us to believe he'll fit funding in now while also still only spending our tax dollars on the military.) Then McCain quickly shifted to the offensive and accused Biden of being "wrong on foreign policy," despite having more - and more valuable - experience than McCain. Biden's "wrong" because he has a better approach than McCain - who himself is open about stubbornly refusing to sit down with many foreign leaders. (Once again coloring the reality of McCain's politics in his attacks on Biden.)

On energy independence? The usual entirely unrealistic "Drill, baby, drill!" solution where we'll somehow magically find enough oil in our country to satisfy the rapid consumption. (When McCain undoubtedly won't even be alive when we see the effects of current offshore drilling, and it won't conveniently bring down the price of oil or help us achieve energy independence in any meaningful way like he and Republicans claim - it's just a handout to the oil industry in the interest of keeping America addicted.) The only other real solutions? Clean coal - going back to focusing on another fossil fuel we should be looking to leave in the past as well - and nuclear energy, which the American people are unlikely to ever trust, given its history. And in discussing trade agreements, McCain defiantly defended many of our morally questionable trade agreements that solely serve our interests and don't look out for the people in the countries we're trading with against Obama's reasonable criticisms. In regards to many of our trade agreements, we frankly aren't acting like a respectable first world nation - our interests being our sole interests, for all our professed concern for world affairs. (Which we only really see when we're looking to justify an invasion or bombings anyway.)

Then Schieffer brought up a big issue - abortion rights. And McCain went ahead and took his campaign to new lows, going from being purposefully openly unclear on his sentiments on the issue to attacking abortion and making his interest in overturning Roe v. Wade clear, while also taking up a snide attitude - absolutely brimming with contempt - to those who don't agree with him in his subscription to the Republican myth of a "pro-abortion" movement where somehow women enjoy getting pregnant and getting guilt-free abortions. He demonstrated his ignorance of the realities abortion and the importance of its legality - and in women's rights in general - as the option of a choice, with pregnancy in general not being a black and white issue as the so-called "pro-life" (In reality, simply anti-choice, as often as we see the "pro-life" crowd only truly concerned with "life" when it takes the form of an unwanted fertilized egg or fetus, or simply pushing for requiring the birth of a child even if it may be a danger to - and even potentially fatal to - the mother.) crowd prefers to. Apparently the whole notion of "women's health" is a farce in McCain's eyes (And valuing the health of the mother over the unborn child? An "extremist" position.), and women seriously wait until their pregnancy's far along before getting abortions and simply claim "health reasons." (When in reality, this very small percentage of abortions generally comes from pregnant women intending to have children, but ultimately having to terminate the pregnancy due to either serious defects in the fetus or serious health risks posed to the mother.) McCain came away from that moment looking like an outright clueless misogynist. Obama, on the other hand? Acknowledged the complicated situations in life that lead to the need for abortion, as well as the importance of comprehensive sex ed and birth control in focusing on reducing the number of unintended pregnancies. (And by proxy, abortions as well.)

In regards to education? Obama called for more funding, reform,and transparency - all things that the public school system could sorely use. McCain? Made it clear that he had no interest in investing in public education, like Bush, and was more than happy with the idea of more or less continuing to abandon it while focusing on charter schools and bringing back the Bush campaigns' dead, failed calls for private school vouchers. (It's high time these kids learned that it was Jesus who invented the lightbulb! And that it's full of god's light and magic!) Also apparently our troops should be coming home and going right to the classroom to teach! (Qualifications? Certifications? What're those?! We need to take our military-worship to whole new levels and treat our troops like they're genius superhuman American heroes qualified to do whatever they want, whenever they want! Make them jump through the same hoops as everyone else to educate them and assure they're actually qualified and capable in a field? You haven't been to WAR, have you?)

Following the debate - having watched it on NBC - Tom Brokaw noted how mocking McCain's tone had often been towards Obama throughout the debate. (Nothing new or unsurprising there.) And he also noted that neither candidate responded to Schieffer's call for them to go back to clean campaigning for the remainder of the election cycle. It's been noted online a number of times as well that McCain was openly snide throughout the debate, with his repeated compliments on Obama's skills as an orator, while ultimately using them to try to build up to painting him as nothing more than a "smooth talker." Despite the fact that Obama had more in the way of substance and actual concrete plans to address the problems we're facing as a nation. McCain had a bit of an interrupting problem throughout the debate as well - there were many times when he clearly didn't want Obama to finish what he had to say. Nothing in the way of respect there.

Debate season's finally over. I've definitely lost a few brain cells listening to McCain make some of the seriously deluded arguments he has. But in the least, he seems poised to lose the election by a potentially large margin. All I can say is - do the right thing, America. Prove, for once, that you're not as stupid as the rest of the world is convinced. This is the first major step we can take in redeeming ourselves and making good for the George W. Bush years, both to ourselves and the rest of the world.

(Also, yes, I know this entry was supposed to be the An American Carol one, but it ended up turning into final debate rambling. I did get even more movie mockery written though. That next entry will be posted later this week, I swear! Look forward to it in Conservative Satire Part III. (The last one.) And yes, I'm well aware of how rehashed this entry probably feels from the last one. Huzzah for clashes of the talking points.)

Still Alive

(And no, the title's not a Portal reference. Those have been run into the ground. Damn you, Portal fans, for ruining a Jonathan Coulton song for me.)

Not a big post this time, just dropping by since I haven't updated in over a month now to say that I'm still here, and there's more content coming soon. I meant to write more in June, but I've been in overdrive mode working on my novel. I'm going to be finishing up the 18th of the 28 chapters of Project 27 Days this week, and I'm continuing along towards my goal I'm hellbent on meeting of completing said novel by mid-August so I can shift more of my attentions back to this thing, grad school searches (Though I may bite the bullet and endure another year here and see if I stand a chance of getting into UMass Amherst's graduate creative writing program next fall, seeing as they don't have spring admissions. If I'm really lucky, I'll be published by then. I'm hoping to find a good agent willing to represent me by sometime this fall if I can, as to get the book on shelves by next spring at the latest - speaking all in terms of ideals here. The agent query process is going to be hell, no doubt, with all the rejection it'll surely be filled with.), and finding an agent to work on getting Project 27 Days published by sometime next year if I'm lucky. (And I'm sure I'll be juggling a second novel on top of that.)

Anyway, I just wanted to drop by and say that I appreciate those of you coming by who are bothering to still check this blog out. It's not dead, just sort of sleeping for a little while since I'm keeping myself occupied. There's stuff going on in the news as is though, and E3 is next week. I guarantee I'll be doing another E3 entry then. (In fact, I may break it up into several smaller ones to improve readability, as opposed to one gigantic daunting wall of text. If you'd prefer I do that for the sake of readability, by all means, please comment and say so. I could use the feedback.) There've already been a number of great announcements in the past few days that I intend to babble about as is. (See: Captain Rainbow, Oneechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers, Mega Man 9 WiiWare, The Conduit, the new main series Tales Wii game, Spore, Arc Light Fantasia, Little King's Story, Spyborgs, Viva Pinata Pocket Paradise, Fatal Frame IV, Plunder, Away Shuffle Dungeon, A.S.H., Tales of Hearts, Elebits 2, Wario Land Shake, Fragile, Wii Music, Chrono Trigger DS, Namco's Idolm@ster style Wii dance game, and doubtlessly an assortment of announcements at E3 next week.)

In the meantime, I'm going to keep writing and doing a bit of gaming myself (Finished Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn a couple of weeks ago, trying to beat the final boss in Neutopia II and nearly to the end of Phantasy Star II on the Virtual Console now, and working on Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard on the DS.), whiling away the hot summer days. At least the year's over half over now.

Those of you who remember this blog exists and keep coming by to check for updates, your visits are much appreciated, believe me. I've just been keeping myself very busy with other things in regards to my writing, but no worries - your actually remembering this place isn't in vain. There'll be more good writing not too far off. I'm going to try to get a few more entries out over the course of this month in addition to the E3 one(s), and no doubt some more political ones as we get further into election season. After all my bitching and rambling about the subject before, I've been pretty quiet on that front since primary season ended and all. My overall feelings as of now amount to that while I think Obama'll be a far better president than George W. Bush (Though even a dead cat could do a better job than Dubya.), he's not a flawless candidate by any stretch either, nor someone to be deified. (More or less how I felt about Hillary Clinton overall, though I preferred Obama to her all along, and Kucinich over both of them.) McCain, on the other hand, is doing a good job consistently showing us that he'd be an abysmal president, the last person we'd want or need in the White House after eight years of Bush. (And it's hard not to look at things in an even more cynical light in watching HBO's John Adams miniseries on DVD lately. Really well-done show, by the way.)

Keep an eye on this place, at any rate. I'll be back and writing more again soon, both on gaming (As is inevitable) and more humor about a variety of subjects, as I haven't gotten back to much since February or so.

Hype Money: The Death of Journalistic Integrity in Gaming

You watch TV, right? Of course you do. Who doesn't? (Don't pretend, snobs. "I don't watch television," you say? We know all about your little love affair with PBS. Yes, Masterpiece Theater is still television. Now go and hang your head in shame.) As such, you're likely used to being exposed to all sorts of commercials. (Unless you just Tivo everything and fast forward through said commercials.) And what commercials are more obnoxious than video game commercials? I'm a lifelong gamer and hell, I have no problem admitting how bad those things are. (Though granted, Nintendo's "Wii Would Like To Play" commercials at least promote a healthy approach to the hobby, as opposed to the others' efforts to convince you that you're some sort of badass for sitting in a room alone in front of your TV jamming on buttons.)

These commercials, desperate to sell you on how awesometacious their product is, will often beat you over the head with its attitude and attempt to paint a very one-sided picture of the product. It's very common for Xbox 360 games to focus on CGI cutscenes over demonstrating actual gameplay in their games. And I have yet to see so much as a single Playstation 3 commercial that shows any actual gameplay footage whatsoever. They focus on only showing the CGI cutscenes to attempt to convince you that that's what the game looks like in motion - for these two consoles, this generation's been all about pushing graphics while pretty much rehashing and regressing gameplay, considering how often game quality has suffered on these consoles as a result of the fixation on visuals. (Remember, kids! If it isn't all about the high definition visuals, it may as well give you AIDS! Also, if the game isn't Rated M For Mature, then it automatically sucks and is aimed at two-year-olds with learning disabilities. Good games compensate for your insecurities. Who said anything about fun!?) When publishers aren't trying to pull the wool over consumers' eyes when it comes to their software's visuals, they're touting review scores.

"Its graphics are more realistic than real life," says GameSpot.com.

"This one time, I had a sex dream, but it really turned out to be this game I was porking," says 1up.com.

"You're not a hardcore gamer unless you own this," says Game Informer.

"I would kill my own mother if necessary to play this game," says IGN.com.

Veritable sound bites written to be slapped onto game packaging and quoted in commercials are written, and at times going the extra personal route - by implying that you, as an individual, need to make a purchase in order to maintain "hardcore gamer" credibility. Jump on the bandwagon or you're not one of the cool kids! Sound biased? You bet it does. For years, refusing to critically judge games - in particular the big name ones - and instead acting as shills is a problem that's only grown in the gaming media. Publishers have a dangerous amount of influence on the press, and the press allows this - even comes to rely on it - while gamers choose to ignore the lack of journalistic integrity and objectivity that comes with it.

Integrity in general has been a hot topic amongst gamers in the past few months. Unfortunately, most miss the mass corruption forest - allowing the media to continue to get away with its corruption with no mass public outcry or criticism of influence (Even this no-name blog will have no impact, but in the least, I can serve to get the word out there.) - for a few carefully spun trees. The prime example of this being the dismissal of staff writer Jeff Gerstmann at GameSpot.com late last year. He wrote a highly critical review of a much-hyped third person shooter, Kane & Lynch, which GameSpot had been paid to promote for a while. The quality of the review was less than remarkable - largely unprofessional, with the video review playing out like a bag YouTube vlog rant. Shortly after his dismissal, Gerstmann opted to take his revenge on GameSpot by outing them as "adjusting" their review scores based on advertising dollars received from publishers, paying them to act as shills - to sell games, not criticize or objectively evaluate them like they claim. GameSpot never aired the reason for Gerstmann's dismissal. Nor did Gerstmann himself state why he was fired. The gaming populace on the internet decided to jump to conclusions - a conclusion, ultimately, so accepted that were the truth to come out, it wouldn't be accepted - that Gerstmann had been fired for "sticking it to the man" and writing an honest review. This is a flawed theory, given that had that been the issue, Gerstmann himself would no doubt have announced it and used it to fuel his efforts to not only burn his bridges with GameSpot, but to burn the site down entirely. Gerstmann claims that he is legally unable to reveal why he was fired, while CNet, the company behind GameSpot, has stated explicitly that it had nothing to do with the review. We don't know exactly why Gerstmann was fired, but Gerstmann and his friends managed to use their biting back at GameSpot to fuel hordes of gamers on the internet to attempt to sink the site at every turn and discredit it as much as possible. These same people never ask themselves why it took Gerstmann so long to out GameSpot, or speculate that maybe, just maybe he was a willing part of the same corruption up until he was let go. He's successfully made a martyr of himself - despite his own unprofessionalism and general poor quality of reviews, in addition to his own clearly exhibited biases that he denies (When all good critics need to be able to criticize and question themselves and their methods, as nobody does in the gaming media. They prefer to ignore their own biases, which in Gerstmann's case, were most often tantamount to apparent efforts to lower Wii game scores on aggregate review sites, making it clear that he does not particularly like the platform, and as such, is not particularly qualified to write unbiased reviews of its games.) - and drawn a reader base to his new, similarly untrustworthy review site/blog, Giant Bomb. (Which is an ironic name in and of itself.) Unfortunately, the majority of gamers are immature, whether man-children or outright children - making it very easy for Gerstmann to make himself look like a victim, when we don't know the whole story, and he's hardly an innocent himself.

Unsourced information was presented as facts (As is commonplace.), and the gaming blogs - such as Kotaku and Joystiq - in no way helped to provide intelligent commentary or framing for the Gerstmann firing scandal, instead helping to whip up the self-proclaimed "hardcore" masses into a frenzy of GameSpot hate. What we watched then was any semblance of journalistic integrity go right out the window in the name of getting hits on the internet - crass, tabloid style writing intended for consumption by masses dying to crucify a site over methods like this. (When they're known to be common enough in the industry as is. Even Japan's must-beloved Famitsu magazine openly admits to giving games better reviews based on how many advertisements companies buy for said game in their pages. But even they manage to maintain some semblance of integrity when reviewing games that publishers aren't bothering to advertise - like Opoona.) And instead of diving in and looking for the truth of what happened, the gaming masses - as the blogs made the connection for them - decided that Gerstmann's dismissal was done for his refusal to conform to corporate pressure and give Kane & Lynch a higher, paid-for review score. (Gamers do love the image of a bad boy renegade. And it isn't hard to trick them into seeing and believing in that image.) The bottom line is, the entire scandal was the result of terrible journalism, lack of actual facts, and conjecture being tossed out as legitimate conclusions in their place to get people stomping their feet. We may never know the real reason GameSpot fired Jeff Gerstmann - and people might not believe them if GameSpot/CNet disclosed it, anyway - but he's come out of the whole thing smelling like a rose. And does he deserve to? Absolutely not. No part of the scandal and its aftermath in any way served gamers, nor the improvement of the gaming media. GameSpot's scrambled ever since to improve their image, which Gerstmann has effectively shattered, despite being no more trustworthy - but they continue to adhere to the same old groupthink that Gerstmann himself represented. Games simply don't get bad reviews unless they're small name and the mainstream market doesn't care about them.

Groupthink too is a scourge on journalistic integrity. The market is currently divided into two camps, one slowly fading into the other - the conservative minority that refuses to play anything beyond the more "traditional" consoles that do nothing new in terms of controls that contribute to gameplay (Awkward use of webcams that serve no purpose or as any means to the furthering of gaming and tacked on, poorly implemented tilt for some "Me too!" motion control in the PS3 controller do not count.), and instead focus on high end technology specs and fancier graphics, while there is little seen and done in the way of new and innovative gameplay. The systems in question are Sony's Playstation 3 and PSP, as well as Microsoft's Xbox 360. Those who cling solely to these systems largely came in during Sony's decade of dominance in the industry, in which they in no way moved it forward in a meaningful sense - their contribution to gaming has been to provide a line of consoles that found success in that developers wanted to put their games on CDs, not N64 cartridges, and that the Sega Saturn was far too difficult to program for with its overly elaborate internal architecture. (The internal architecture's haunting Sony years later now, as developers are having a difficult time developing games for the PS3 that even feel like solid PS2 era games.) But as a big corporation that entered gaming for the profits - and no doubt in part because Ken Kutaragi (The father of the Playstation brand) was sore at Nintendo for refusing to sell (Complete with all their properties) to Sony in exchange for a Super Nintendo Entertainment System CD add-on - they've demonstrated repeatedly that on the whole, they don't understand the first thing about gaming, let alone gamers. Their designs over the past decade were largely built upon copying the Super Nintendo (All the way down to their basic controller design, simply tacking on more buttons and awkward analog sticks in time, creating controllers too complicated for their own good, then refusing to try - and actually commit - to anything new, when new controllers had been the standard each generation in the past.) and its style of games, as the game industry made the move into 3D.

Sony themselves did not facilitate these advances, the third party developers and publishers taking the lead on their platforms - Sony's own first party software frequently being mediocre at best, making their hardware's lifeblood its third party support. Even as conservative as the console's hardware was, Nintendo made more real advancements with the N64 than Sony did with the Playstation. Super Mario 64 was the premiere platformer that brought the genre into 3D and set a precedent for a good decade plus of games in the genre. Likewise, The Legend of Zelda franchise's transition into 3D set the standard for 3D adventure games. Nintendo was the first to bring an analog stick to a controller as a standard feature as well, as awkwardly designed as the N64 controller was. They introduced force feedback in game controllers through the Rumble Pak, which you would plug into the back of the N64 controller. Sony would go on to follow them with their Dual Shock controllers, adding their own rumble - which they'd later lose late into the PS2's life and early into the PS3's for using technology the Immersion company had patented, without permission - and tacking on a couple of awkwardly placed analog sticks and never moving them to more comfortable positions, taking on the complacent position that their designs didn't need fine tuning and were essentially perfect as it was. (And I wish I was kidding about their arrogance, but when the PSP came under criticism for some noteworthy hardware flaws - particularly in using its buttons - Kutaragi himself boasted that "Nobody can criticize the design of a genius architect," his own massive ego on full display.) Overall, Sony's legacy in gaming has largely been an attempt to monopolize the industry while in no way moving it forward - in fact, making as few changes, let alone improvements, to their systems themselves beyond making them more powerful from generation to generation. Absolute conservativism in gaming - an absolute killer on gaming, an industry that thrives on finding new ways to do things, new kinds of gameplay, and new ways to interact with software. Their success continued to go to their heads over the course of their decade of dominance, getting to the point at which they treated their fanbase like idiots who would eat up anything they said or sold - from insulting marketing campaigns (Yes, this is what they think of us.) to boasting upon unveiling the PS3 that we "would buy it even if it didn't have any games." Naturally, they've gotten their just desserts since then, with the arrogantly designed PSP a failure in the gaming market due to a combination of mostly uncompelling software and ease of piracy, and the PS3 representing a sort of extremely poorly designed "Hindenburg of gaming" that fell flat on its face shortly after launch, with its limited software offerings, poor quality software overall, and general design by which it is entirely unfriendly to game development. (It was a Blu-Ray player with gaming options tacked on. And its arrogantly high prices - thanks to the incorporation of expensive technology that in no way actually benefits gaming, in an effort to compete with Microsoft's own powerhouses, when historically, the most powerful gaming hardware has never won a console or portable war - sure as hell didn't help either.)

In retrospect, Sony's biggest accomplishment in their decade of market domination was market expansion - essentially, doing successfully what Sega tried to but never quite made it - selling video games to the crowds that beat nerds up, rather than just the nerds themselves. They groomed a new, very large generation of gamers around the time much of the NES/Master System/SNES/Genesis generation was quitting gaming as they grew up. With Nintendo becoming an underdog and Sony completely dominating, media biases immediately shifted to vilifying Nintendo - as they have yet to break away from after a year and a half of the Wii having successfully dethroned the Playstation brand, and it'll no doubt take longer yet - while virtually deifying Sony. They were the newcomer bad boy to the gaming hardware wars, after all, both kicking ass and taking names. (In console sales anyway, they took long enough to get into portables, and Nintendo summarily destroyed them there with the DS.) They told their fans that they were the "hardcore" gamers, especially during the PS2 years, while pushing M-rated ultraviolent games as the standard of quality and image for games to look up to. The insecure masses latched on to this kind of image they wanted to associate with themselves. And throughout all this, Sony successfully groomed a large generation of uber-conservative gamers who clung to Sony hardware, controllers, and largely mainstream games. (Even while Final Fantasy VII was largely accredited with "making RPGs mainstream," this is largely untrue. What it served to do was make Final Fantasy mainstream, as that franchise shifted its focus to a new, shallow demographic, focusing more on attitude than quality gameplay and worthwhile stories. Instead, it began the trend under Sony's dominance of more traditional Japanese RPGs (JRPGs, as they're commonly referred to) coming under attack, and the entire genre being judged by the question of "How much like Final Fantasy is it?" and if not enough, the game automatically "sucks," so while Final Fantasy enjoyed mainstream success, the RPG genre itself did not. The only sales boosts its games saw came from Sony-pushed advertising campaigns - particularly when they focused on having a bad attitude for the teenagers - and as a result of the general larger gamer base for the console than Nintendo's platforms had enjoyed. These games largely saw a push away from gameplay to more cinematic focuses in presentation, Sony and Square - the company behind Final Fantasy - sought to Hollywoodize video gaming, ultimately to its detriment as a medium.) These gamers pick a very few types of games by which to judge all others, and don't want to see changes in hardware beyond added power. Naturally, when Nintendo's DS and Wii hit the market to record, unforeseen sales, while bringing major new forms of input to the table - allowing for some fantastic and sorely-needed innovation in gaming - along with better prices with moderately powered, well-planned, and designed hardware, they did not take it well.

Microsoft's Xbox line has suffered from some of the same issues, and largely contributed to the same gaming groupthink - "only these games are good," "traditional controllers are perfect, we don't need change," "we only want peripherals to praise as an option but never real changes to gaming input," "rated M is rated awesome," "colorful games might make me gay," and so forth - while their approach to the market was largely in pushing high end technology (Which largely goes unpushed in the end, and the PS3 and 360 both suffer from longer development cycles, much shorter gameplay, and often less meat to their games in general because so much goes into the graphics over everything else now.), and making first-person shooters huge on consoles for the first time since GoldenEye with the Halo series. The Xboxes are largely high-end (At least at launch) gaming PCs in console boxes with a focus, largely, on first person shooters - a PC gamer staple - with the occasional hit western RPG here and there. They don't push anything genuinely innovative as gaming hardware, and are largely a different variation on Sony's conservativism, without nearly as much focus on image consciousness, seeing as even Microsoft seeks to draw in more casual and generally wider audiences. They fail at this, however, in having spent all the early years of the brand pushing it as being "the hardcore console" next to the Gamecube and PS2, when they were all fairly on par in their own ways. The biggest problem the Xbox really brought to gaming was the beginning of efforts to reintroduce PC gaming elements into consoles, while using tired, overcomplicated controller designs, which largely served to alienate by the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox generation. Console gaming has largely replaced PC gaming in popularity over the years because of the very problems in PC gaming we've seen resurface in full force on the PS3 and 360 - messy games with little to no bug testing, requiring patches, forced installs to reduce load times on disc games, space management issues despite larger hard drives without the ease of swapping memory cards, and so forth. Especially in the PS3's case, these issues have gotten them some bad PR.

Ultimately, the ultra-conservative groupthink spawned by the generation of gamers that came in with Sony and Microsoft has helped to not only taint, but break today's gaming media. Conservative gaming groupthink largely serves to hold the industry back by discouraging free thought and new ideas, saying that things shouldn't change, that they can't get any better beyond processing power and graphical advancements. (They often tout higher end hardware leading to better physics and AI too, but let's face it - most AI in gaming is terrible, and it'd make games too hard and upset gamers if it were better than it is. Likewise, realistic physics, while an interesting feat, don't serve to improve quality of gameplay at all, and in fact often contribute to additional gamer frustration. The more a"realistic" Sony and Microsoft push games to look and feel, the less fun they become. This approach seeks to essentially strangle the imagination out of gaming, the fantasy the industry has built itself upon.) Gamers cling to notable centers for their groupthink to originate from - hence why Jeff Gerstmann remains popular and his own corruption denied. He tells them what they want to hear, so as far as they're concerned, he's innocent. Unfortunately, the video game industry has no real center of true media and journalism, just shills masquerading as journalists with no integrity.

The next issue in the downfall of the industry is hype. It's a damn hype machine. I've rambled enough here as is, but over at Kombo, Michael Kelly says well how the media impacts games, ultimately how our review scores are bought as a standard part of the marketing process, killing journalistic integrity. Games get hyped to death, and Kelly articulates the effects well as being "The Phantom Menace Effect." We were all dying to see a new Star Wars movie, critics all raved about it, and it saw more hype than any movie in a very long time. We all saw it, most loved it, caught up in the hype. Others' jaws dropped at how terrible it was. After enough time had passed and the hype finally wore off, most of the rest of us were finally able to look back and admit to ourselves, "Man, that movie sucked. What the hell were they talking about?" Final Fantasy VII saw this treatment back in 1997 when the press was largely bought off to call it the "greatest game ever made." Nowadays, it's lucky if it makes it into top 100 lists, simply because it wasn't a good game, and has aged terribly.

We're seeing the exact same thing repeated now with Grand Theft Auto IV, which I'll get to in a bit. (If you're still with me. I can't imagine that many of you are sticking with this whole thing, there's so much reading here.) What we should have learned from this is that no flawless review should be trusted, especially when this universal, but like Square did back then, Rockstar is pulling a fast one on us in 2008. And the press hasn't lifted a finger to stop them. Gamers say they want serious criticism and commentary - for games to be treated like art - but after one well known site's review of the PS3/360's Iraqi-killing/high-five-getting simulator, Army of Two, tore the game apart for its reprehensible politics and gave it a serious critique, gamers on the internet largely threw a tantrum in getting what they want not equaling all M-rated games being given top notch scores and called "art," as they want to call all games now. (These are not people who understand art, either. Speaking as a lifelong gamer and patron of the arts, most video games are no more art than the average bad show on television.) The truth of what they want from the press is this - to hear exactly what they're expecting, in continuing conservative groupthink. If a game has been hyped up to be amazing, then you have to call it that. If it has a big name behind it and it's rated M, it's automatically awesome. You can't criticize these games. Not Ratchet & Clank, not Uncharted, not Devil May Cry, not Halo, not Gears of War, and especially not Grand Theft Auto. (Or anything Take-Two/Rockstar makes, for that matter.) Games like these have their reviews bankrolled - and at times, even written - in advance. The media's job is ultimately made to be to satisfy publishers with high marks for their money. And if they don't get what they want, they lose advertising revenue and at times even risk being cut off by that publisher. While if a game is small name and isn't getting pushed hard on the market and - god forbid - E-rated, it's automatically garbage, regardless of how good it actually is. If there's no hype and extra money coming from that title, it's no good. (I'll be addressing Opoona as a noteworthy recent example of this in a bit.)

The divided market itself plays a major role in the shattering of any semblance of journalistic integrity in gaming these days as well. The gaming media and its dialogue is dominated by conservative groupthink, where games are not judged by their own merits, but in comparison to other games that conservative gamers would rather be playing. (And they like to call themselves these "hardcore" gamers, claiming open-mindedness, while ultimately acting on just the opposite, and refusing to recognize their own conservativeness and bias, since they'd lose the ability to use these matters to attack and criticize games they don't like and segments of the market who don't think the same way they do. This is hardly uncommon human behavior, even outside of gaming.) The broken media caters to these gamers - as many developers try to - in an effort to wage war with progress and change in gaming, the progress and change represented by Nintendo with the Wii and DS and the massive market expansion they represent, bringing all sorts of games. to anybody interested, with more accessible new control schemes that further gaming as a medium. Instead of judging games like Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Elebits, and so forth on their own merits, they tear them down because - a) Wii Sports isn't a "serious" sports game, b) Wii Fit is seen as a huge threat that somehow could possibly cause all of gaming to collapse on itself and all previous games to disappear forever in giving us exercise software (That most gamers could sorely use), and c) how dare a game be light, humorous and colorful while taking the FPS approach! They'd be better suited to blasting aliens with blood everywhere! Don't you know that cute, light games with a sense of humor are all for children?! (Remember, being a "mature" gamer entails having no sense of fun.) Nintendo doesn't bankroll their reviews. And Wii games by third parties largely don't get advertised much. As a result, the media here tends to tear the system's games apart more often than not, nitpicking games to the Nth degree to reduce their score instead of giving you a balanced review weighing the pros and cons. (Conversely, they'll excuse many, many flaws - both big and small - without their impacting reviews on the PS3 and 360.) It's what the conservative crowd wants to hear, after all - that the Wii sucks and is just a fad machine being purchased for Wii Sports (Actual attach rate numbers and software sales numbers show it easily overtaking the 360 this year and completely dominating this generation like the PS2 did last time, with a much wider variety of software selling than on its competitors.), while the 360 is amazing (Because the real important things in gaming are pay-to-play online and voice chat so you can hunt each other down in FPSes online and feel like big men.) and the PS3 is somehow magically on its way to becoming a juggernaut that will take the market by storm and crush the Wii. (Which isn't happening, and it's not even taking off as a Blu-Ray player, since the format hasn't picked up in sales like it was predicted to with the demise of its competitor, HD-DVD. There's no reason the market should adopt a high definition successor to DVD at this point, after all, so it isn't.)

And thus, we get to Grand Theft Auto IV. It just hit shelves the other day, and naturally, it's selling like gangbusters. (For a PS3/360 release. Which ultimately means that it won't quite reach the series' usual PS2 sales last gen with its market dominance, considering that neither the PS3 nor the 360 will never achieve what the PS2 did, as is more than obvious at this point.) The game was hyped to death. Literally to being the most obnoxiously public example of the death of integrity in gaming journalism. Rockstar has a disgustingly aggressive policy of effectively bullying the press into hyping their games and giving them near flawless to flawless reviews. This was something they were just outed for last fall. Very few segments of the media covered it, largely trying to stomp out and ignore the story. It was in Rockstar's interests, after all.

And after those revelations, we're seeing the worst case scenario come true - the entirety of the mainstream media manipulated and hyped into agreeing that Grand Theft Auto IV is the greatest game ever made, and getting it to the top of the aggregate review sites - Gamerankings and Metacritic - dethroning the #1 game there (The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which I don't personally agree is the greatest game of all time either, but it certainly belongs far up there and was a suitable game for that slot.) and the #2 as well (Super Mario Galaxy, which managed a great feat in getting up there in Nintendo's not bullying the press, and frequently seeing much harsher reviews as a result. Mario Galaxy belongs up there too - it is effectively gaming bliss, representing the best of gaming's roots, modern gaming, and the future of gaming in input and interaction.), Rockstar essentially moving to take that spot as a fuck-you to Nintendo's traditional dominance of the top 10 (Though The Orange Box managed to get a couple of its versions up there too, though honestly, as good as that is, it's kind of overinflated for FPSes.), given that GTA was supposed to be a major weapon against the success of the Wii, which they've only laughed about. (Ironically, given that the best version of Bully - which is honestly the only game of theirs that interests me - being on it. Their only other releases on it were their Table Tennis game, a superior-controlled port of the 360 original with added motion controls but some unfortunately removed content, and Manhunt 2, which was a terrible game and a general clusterfuck of controversy to hype the game up, when it just honestly wasn't good.)

And what we've gotten as a result of their stranglehold on the media with the GTA franchise is the most blatant lying we've seen yet. Gamers've been reporting numerous problems with the game, from freezing to crashing to console bricking, the game has plenty of issues with the in-game engine running properly and consistently, and the controls are clunkier and less intuitive than before, a sacrifice made to "more realistic" physics. Then they tacked on a so-so online mode, which got hyped up tremendously as well despite not being anywhere near as remarkable as they made it out to be - in not being remarkable at all. And the core of the game? The cardinal sin - it's a rehash of the exact same core game, same kinds of missions, same exact gameplay, with little to no fine tuning and a few new clunky additions - such as taking cover when fighting - that in no way enhance the game. It's a popular PS2/Xbox franchise's awkward, heavily flawed transition to the conservative high-end hardware consoles, bringing nothing new of note to the table, and ultimately serving as a tired rehash of a series that has overstayed its welcome, having stopped truly innovating beyond its initially bringing a vast world to the table - the series was never known for its quality gameplay, just a large variety of half-assed gameplay, like - as it was recently put best on SomethingAwful.com - "a bunch of used up bars of soap squeezed together to make a big new one." Rockstar manipulated the media and hyped the majority up into giving the GTA series far more credit and praise than it ever deserved, and this is the gaming media's biggest offense to the gaming public in breaking away from journalistic integrity - blatantly misleading the masses in calling it the greatest game ever made despite numerous flaws that nobody could responsibly overlook. There was nothing impartial, unbiased, or even intelligent and honest in IGN's multi-page masturbation of the game in calling it better than watching movies - when GTA's always been B-movie gangster writing at best, and this is no different - and worth $300 easily, when that's outright pandering to Rockstar and spitting in gamers' faces. (No game is worth that kind of money. Let alone the $50-60 most go for these days.) And even after Rockstar was outed for their corrupt practices in working with the press? The average gamer's raving about the game - drinking the kool-aid - because it's exactly what they wanted to hear. That "the best game of all time isn't on the Wii and couldn't be done on the Wii, fuck Nintendo and their success," while the game itself is nothing to write home about, let alone deserving of the kind of blatantly excessive praise it's received. There's no objectivity, no impartiality, no honesty.

Rockstar has successfully martyred themselves in the industry through stirring up controversy and ending up the target of figures like Florida attorney Jack Thompson - who seems to be more of a hired joke for PR stunts than actually passionate bout his cause, he's become such a cartoon character. But no, you're not wrong in wondering if that heavily violence-laced game really is the best game ever made. It's just what they want you to think, amidst its numerous noteworthy flaws. If Rockstar's accomplished anything here, it's in openly revealing how broken the mainstream gaming press is. It's all about stirring up controversy and cashing in on a media frenzy. Rockstar's marketing department and higher-ups have no qualms about abusing the system to their benefit. They represent the worst, the lowest discourse in gaming. What they do cheapens it, and is an insult to each and every one of us.

On the opposite end of the scale, we have Opoona. Even more so than the similarly railed-upon Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey on the Xbox 360, it represents media bias ripping an undeserving game apart. Like the other two, it's a traditional JRPG, going all the way back to the genre's NES/SNES roots, with random enemy encounters, stats, spells learned naturally over time, and a more energetic twist on classic turn-based combat. In the western media, every JRPG gets the same sorts of complaints these days, which pretty much amount to this - aside from Final Fantasy, the mainstream does not like JRPGs anymore and finds gameplay elements that define the genre "unacceptable," which is a statement about the players and their tastes, not the game's quality. Today's conservative gamers - who feed on the groupthink, convinced that their opinions are sacrosanct fats - just don't seem to be able to realize that mabye their tastes aren't in classic JRPGs and general JRPGs after complaining after playing games like more recent Final Fantasy titles, judging the genre by exceptions, not the way the majority play. It's like there's a bullet list of classic JRPG cliches that all suddenly make games "suck" now. The genre isn't going to change because a bunch of North Americans are sick of the formula. (Which offers a great deal of variety in and of itself, Opoona being one of the most unique JRPGs in quite a while.)

The western media ripped Opoona apart, and the average gamer here said "eh, I knew it was going to suck," when the reviewers never gave it a chance. The media simply gave them an excuse to deny their being conservative gamers, deciding that every game that they had no interest in to begin with 'sucks' and that's that, while still telling themselves that they're open-minded and justify a lack of adventurousness. (An irony in the RPG genre.) So we get people basically agreeing 'hay if this site sez it sux it sux cuz I like this site,' all an excuse for people to avoid forming their own opinions and falling into the same old groupthink, as most gamers do and miss out on a tremendous amount of worthwhile games as a result of.

It's this same kind of groupthink by which even where they are now, Nintendo can do no right, while so many still cheer on Sony and readily forgive them for everything they've done wrong at the drop of a hat. Just like people when it comes to just about anything else, gamers are rarely free-thinking individuals who work regularly as fully functional critical thinkers when it comes to their hobby. And the fact that there isn't much of a 'real' gaming media to speak of - (Reiterating for the umpteenth time) critics are paid to sell games, not to give honest reviews, and personal biases are rarely if ever owned up to, creating the illusion that anyone is fit to adequately judge any game objectively, while you get no real insight into or criticism of games, generally, when it should be done. Tired games are praised on other platforms where evolutions of classic franchises are slammed on Nintendo hardware. (Zelda and Smash Brothers are criticized for being rehashes, while GTA is praised for doing the same thing, as are games like Devil May Cry and God of War, when those are especially shallow, overhyped games to begin with that do nothing for the medium.) And if a reviewer thinks critically about a game - like the infamous Army of Two review - we see gamers throwing a hissy fit because it wasn't the review they wanted.

The damage conservative approaches to gaming have done to the industry in and of itself makes the Wii and DS all the more significant as gaming hardware goes, not just in their sales triumphs, but what they bring to the table that's fresh and new. Gamers need to peel off the crusty conservative buildup of the past decade and open their minds to something new - failing that, at least learn to acknowledge their own biases and tastes, rather than trying to write off everything that doesn't fit them as garbage. (Which is what we're seeing now, with the nearly violent reactions we saw to the Wii and DS at their announcements and even more so to their mass market success. And the Wii especially is still a target of that today, though the DS still sees some anger, mostly from PSP fanatics who're still convinced that it's doing well as a gaming platform, when it isn't.) We're seeing close minded-arguments that the market is splitting into casual and hardcore consumers, which isn't true either - Sony thrived for a decade because they captured the casual, mainstream market as well. It wasn't all the same people who're buying Brain Training and such now, but it's a similar idea. But the bottom line is, the market isn't going to segregate itself, and with the Wii on its way to complete market dominance, we're only going to continue to see more third parties put their big titles on it, given that it's also proven that third party games can sell extremely well so long as you treat the Wii owner base as seriously as the other platforms' users. The Wii Sports/Big Brain Academy gamers are not the ones making the Wii the success it is, and even then, the Wii attach rate is higher than the other consoles' fanatics claim it is. The Wii is already a more serious hardcore console than the PS3, and it'll pass the 360 in that regard, library-wise, in time too, especially due to its being essentially the only hit console in Japan this generation. It's the all-inclusive console, not an either/or system. Just as Nintendo was wrong about being able to divide the portable market between the Gameboy Advance and DS and create a new market with the DS rather than swallowing the other, gaming itself is not becoming segmented and separated into casual and hardcore users (With the latter all supporting Sony and Microsoft as they claim), the Wii's simply swallowing up the majority share of the market, period. After a decade of conservative gaming strangling the market and the PS2 suffering from the worst rate of sequels and rehashes of any console in a generation, the Wii revolution is what gaming needed most.

Getting back to reiterating previous points yet again, and following previous trains of though where I got away from Opoona there - it's groupthink that simply leads to nonthinking blind defense of a bad review of a good game someone never played nor wanted to, simply because the review 'proves they were right.' Opoona's a damn good game, with a beautiful, immersive, and incredibly well designed world overflowing with more personality than most games in the past decade combined. Not flawless, to be sure, but the flaws are not huge by any means, and where it shines, it more than outshines the detriments of the game's flaws. It's a quirky, obscure third party game that deserves to be supported - and regardless of reviews, it'll no doubt ultimately sell out its small print run in its entirety anyway (Koei went in knowing the game wasn't going to be a hit, as it wasn't in Japan, given that most new IPs don't sell well there, regardless of critical reception.) - and not marginalized even worse than EarthBound (A similarly quirky, wonderful SNES RPG that hit in 1995 to much crying over its visual style and less focus on a dramatic story than an immersive adventure with the focus on the experience of the journey - like Opoona.) was when it came out to largely the same reaction from RPG fans. 'Look at those graphics! It can't possibly be good!' They want the media to tell them they're right - and so they did. The way Opoona was received, by and large, is an excellent source of insight into - and a strong example of - everything wrong with the gaming media. Smaller name, obscure games get ripped apart. The blockbusters all get raved about. (Though they're more than willing to attack Nintendo ones, as they have the more recent Mario Kart games, which are excellent.)

And in the end today, the western press - and most western gamers - don't want JRPGs. If they get anything in the genre, it has to take itself seriously, like Final Fantasy - too seriously, to the point of painful melodrama. And I can remember that when I was a kid, RPGs were the genre we could pride ourselves on playing because of their deeper stories and huge amounts of text - not to mention the thoughtful, strategic combat. Now it either has to be a near-action game or feel like an MMORPG with no battle transitions for today's ADD gamer, who considers reading in the genre to be a BAD thing. Whaddaya mean the game isn't fully voice-acted!? I feel like I'm doing homework, reading in my games.

In summation, whether you're a regular gamer who pays attention to these things or someone who simply enjoys it as a light hobby - if at all - you shouldn't listen to the words of the video game media - especially not the big, mainstream sites. They're thoroughly in publishers' pockets, and in large part, there's no sense of real journalistic integrity to speak of. Think for yourself, keep an open mind with games, and do your own research. Don't let the media tell you what's good and what's bad, and what to buy.

Yes, this was a freaking long one.