Politics or Popularity?

    I've got complaints about the 2008 election. I haven't heard the slightest on any of the candidate's politics. The only candidate I can root for is John McCain, and more due to the fact that Republicans would be more conservative than the Democrats, as a general rule (he's surely more conservative than Obama or Hillary). The problem is that instead of having political debate, we're getting more of an American Idol style popularity contest determining our president. Are we voting for our favorite singer, or our favorite leader?

    The ESRB Needs Fixing

    The Electronic Software Rating Board is the most broken thing in our rating society. What you do is you take a panel of "experts" and let them watch a feature on a game, then pass judgement. They don't even have to play the game at all. We need to have another board of ratings, one using a content-context system, and relying on a panel of gamers and judges. Violence, Language, Sex, and other factors can be rated from 0-5 (color scale, 0 is blue, 1-5 is green to red), put in a list, and then have a contextual rating applied. For instance, in a game where the player kills one foe throughout the entire game, and in defense of others, the context would be more on the left (mild), but in your standard FPS/Deathmatch game, it would be on the right (pointless), regardless of how graphic the violence is (that's for the color scale). Testers would be required to play through the game (or play for at least 20 hours), unless they had an objection to content.

    Game Review- Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2

    I review games a long time after they come out, don't I? I enjoy GRAW 2 a lot. Quite simply, it is the thinking man's FPS. It still has all the action, but it has action with a cerebral background, action-filled plot, great music, and big booms. Wait, that's not for the thinking man. Oh well. GRAW 2 is one of the best games you can find. It blends standard "Shoot here!" style with a more thinking game style (but not like Zelda or anything, it's still simple). Basically it has no puzzles, but it's not a "shoot, pick up health and ammo, repeat". It's got awesome graphics (though some could use a bit of work, a fair level of difficulty (I died five or so times at the same place on the same level, but because I kitted out bad). Five @'s. Try it, you'll probably buy it if it's your style..