SixTwoSixFour

Yeah, it made me blow my load... ... bearing wall. So I guess I'll have to go to Lowes to get some drywall.

Duke, you're arguing logic against that which is not logical. The whole Christian faith is a giant mind trap, and you really can't win against it. It's pretty cleverly designed, that's why it's stood the test of time. Don't believe? You're going to hell. Do any of a million things that people do? You DESERVE to go to hell, be grateful that God thinks that your belief is good enough that he won't send you to hell. Reject the holy spirit? You're going to hell. Think about the IDEA of rejecting the holy spirit? Yep, hell (Matthew 12:31-32). You have to convert your friends and family, because if you don't, they're going to hell. Basically, hell is dangled over your head like a Sword of Damocles as a response to any behavior that might cause the religion to stop growing. The whole thing is built to motivate people to spread the word, and do what their preachers tell them, but without being so hardcore and strict that people decide they can't keep with it. Finely crafted. And if I'm being frank, it seems pretty evil to me. Not Christians themselves, they're victims in all of this. The men who started it all, so many years ago... they were evil. To do this to so many people, to so thoroughly fuck up their minds with threats of neverending pain. EDIT: Small note, Yant, you should Copy Plain Test or something, your formatting on these copy and pastes is driving me crazy =P

Hrmmm. Maybe I've been misinvesting my points? My main issue, though, is their primary power- yes, Warp works well and Overload does the job, but those are tools that other classes have. The only tool that Sentinel has exclusively is the armor, and I feel like I don't notice any real reduction in damage when it's active, and it takes TWO cooldowns to use the AoE effect, which is stupid.

I was really impressed by the multiplayer. My only concern is that they didn't fix the Sentinel class- it still plays like shit, weak and not fun to use. Other than that, though, I can see myself putting a lot of time into the game. Not bad, Bioware.

2 Samuel, telling your guys to kill handicapped people is not okay. Even if it's to get them riled up for a battle, I'm not okay with that. Sadly, you didn't respond to a couple of the ones I would have been really interested to see an answer to, so that's theonly answer that I object to (other than the homosexuality, but we've been down that road afore). Other than that, I found your explanation of mosaic law helpful, and I appreciate it. I don't buy it personally, though. I think for those laws to have ever existed- the mixed cloths one, the don't touch a pigskin one, etc.- is crazy, and I don't believe that God would write rules like that. Those have the ring of Man to me, in their illogic and foolishness. Honestly, if you believe in the Bible it seems like the only possible conclusion is that God is an asshole. I'm not one of the atheists of our little group, I do believe in God, just not the god of Abraham. I'm not trying to say there's no god. I just don't believe that the Bible is His word. Let me pose a question to you. What kind of god would condemn you to eternal suffering for guessing wrong on what is basically a multiple choice question with infinite answers? New religions are invented all the time, you could create one right now if you wanted. Only one is right. There is no evidence, it's all based on faith. So your odds of choosing the right answer are 1/ ∞ and if you're wrong, eternal hellfire. Personally, I don't believe that any god that's up there would be that much of a cock.

And I hope this is the case, but this is a piece of footage released as a representation of the final product. What's more, this is the first gameplay we've seen, other than the initial E3 trailer. This chunk of game was very very carefully selected. And with all that caution they chose to show us some very scripted, very straightforward gunplay. That doesn't mean that's all there is to the game, but it doesn't do much for our optimism.

PS3...? Anybody...?

I don't know how I'm supposed to blatantly pander to the crowds if we switch systems.

It's not always "believe it causes autism." Sometimes it's "don't want to spend the money." Some parents will only get medical care when there is an obvious, pressing issue, and aren't willing to spend the money (or time) on preventive care. I'm fully in support of people wanting to know why a treatment is necessary, and avoiding unnecessary medical work, but a patient who ignores the advice of a doctor- hell, if you believe that a shot causes autism when the highly trained medical expert is telling you you're wrong- is a bad patient, and I don't think any physician should have to put up with a patient who won't cooperate. Optimally, physicians would treat everyone. But this is life. There are far more patients than there are doctors. Doctors can't treat everyone in a timely manner. So how do you choose? When you have a patient who has a record of ignoring physician advice, and one who does what they are told to do in a timely manner, it seems a pretty clear choice to me.

Modified reload animation based on whether the gun is dry or not, I like that- not that special, but it's the little things that I appreciate. I wanted to start off with something positive... because the rest of this is gonna be pretty negative. The action looks way too run and gun, not tactical. It looks too scripted. The hallucination stuff looked heavyhanded and dumb. And underwater sections? Booooooo. Really gonna have to lower my expectations here.

As much as I dislike seeing children suffer for the mistakes of their boneheaded parents, that's the world we live in. These physicians are being faced with parents who, it is proven, will disregard medical counsel and assistance when they decide it's too much trouble. It's not just "these kids haven't had their shots." It's "these parents know that the kids need this medical procedure, and they aren't willing to do it." What if you put these kids on a medication that needs to be taken consistently, but then the parents don't fill the prescription for a few weeks because it is too expensive? What if you do a procedure on a kid, and the dressing needs to be changed, but the parents don't bother because it's too much work? Medicine can do amazing things, but if the patient doesn't hold up their end of the treatment, the attempts at healing can be worse than doing nothing at all. Meds taken improperly can cause horrible side effects, injuries and post-surgery cuts can become infected, things can get real bad, real fast. If you can't trust your patient to take care of themselves, you can't help them.

I don't think you can talk about what Mass Effect has "always" been known for when there have been two games, one that is that way and one that isn't.

Looking forward to it.

Okay... messed up stuff in the Bible... oooo, this is gonna be fun. The Discrimination Section 2 Samuel 5:8 Leviticus 20:13 2 John 7 Leviticus 21:17-23 Deuteronomy 22:23-24 The Stoning Section Deuteronomy 22:13-21 Deuteronomy 21:18-21 Deuteronomy 13:6-10 (Good old Deuteronomy, so many stonings) Numbers 15:32-56 General Dickery 2 Chronicles 15:13 Genesis 38:9-10 Matthew 10:34 I guess that's enough for now. There is some messed up shit in the Bible.

Messed up parts of the Bible? I gotta make this a separate post, hang on. Speaking as a liberal, I thought the message of Grey's Anatomy was "sleeping with coworker is totally professional and okay," and I can tell you we definitely don't endorse that. Just because a lot of media has shitty messages doesn't therefore mean that they have liberal messages. That example you gave is pretty striking, though. Perhaps it is more prominent than I thought. I haven't heard that, but it does sound like something people would say. I don't think I've ever heard Liberal talk radio- I'm out here in the middle of Illinois, perhaps it's just not on the airwaves out here. Any time a Christian wants to pray, you can just close your eyes and pray silently. Matthew 6:6- "But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." Prayer isn't supposed to be a public spectacle. It's a quiet communication between you and god, and that's FINE in public. I will agree that it's a complicated subject, though. I know you have problems with evolution, but you must see that it has the most supporting evidence. Nature shows push the evolution "agenda" because of all the evidence supporting it. If there was more evidence supporting intelligent design, nature shows would be talking about that. They go with what appears to be true at the time.

The other great dramatic feature was the gun jamming. I know it annoyed some people, but it was so uncommon that I really loved it. A tense gunfight, and you're racing through a warehouse, bullets whizzing all around, while you punch the shit out of your jammed shotgun, trying to get it to pump. No other feature in the game got your heart pumping like a gun jam at JUST the wrong time. And for the people who got pissed at the guns breaking... you guys are freaks, the only times I managed to break a gun is when I worked (pretty hard) with the goal of breaking them. Far Cry 3 might be good, but I don't want it to just be good. I want it to be good in the ways Far Cry 2 was good. I want that great health system, I want weapon jams, I want an open world where I can tackle missions freely, I want fire propagation, I want the day-night cycle, I want lots of arbitrary guard posts okay, do some things different, make improvements, but don't forget the horse you rode in on.

I can see that liberal bias has been an unpleasant thing for you. I know that it must be frustrating to be confronted with an opinion that you find repugnant in your everyday life. That said, unless you have a very very different media experience than me, liberal bias tends to be pretty understated- they shift the tone of their story, say, but they don't out and out make pro-lifers monsters, or say that anyone opposed to government run insurance is evil. Conservative bias CAN be understated, of course, but very often it's anything but. Fox News straight up lies in order to make liberals look bad, voices like Rush Limbaugh spit venom about left-leaning individuals, the right just seems so much more hateful than the left. Not saying the left is perfect, obviously we're not, but we aren't usually vicious. As far as religion goes, atheists get basically no air time on TV that I've seen. I've never seen someone on TV out and out insult Christianity. I've seen some people, like comedians, poke fun at it. If that is what you mean, then I don't have a lot of sympathy- they're jokes, and you need to get over it. People make jokes at our expense all the time too, laugh along with it and it's all good. If it's something else, some other media phenomenon that you find deeply insulting as a Christian, all I can say is I have no idea what that could possibly be. On the other hand, I HAVE seen Christians pushing for school prayer (which would, incredibly obviously, make the non-Christians feel pressured to join in, and like outsiders if they didn't), I have seen Christians arguing that non-Christians shouldn't be celebrating Christmas (or Easter, for that matter), I have seen Christians cry phrases like "founding fathers" and "what made this country great" when condemning the rest of the country for not going to church. That is what we're sick of. We're sick of the assumption that this is a Christian nation- it's not, that's the whole point. Freedom of religion. We're sick of the assumption that atheists are just Christians who have daddy issues. We're sick of being condescended to and generally treated like disobedient children because we don't have the same spiritual views as you. I tried to keep this post as civil as possible, but there is a lot of anger on our sides, and since we make the effort not to be rude, we've built up a lot of that anger over time. Rage to spare.

I think the chances of that are about nil unless you decide to move to the Muslim world. Because Christians have never murdered anyone who they decided was an enemy of their religion. Like gays, or Muslims, or African-Americans. Oh, right. They totally have. Boy, is my face red.

Interesting, because you're admitting that we have evidence, while you have none, and yet our position is the false one. If you think it's just him, friend, bad news....

So what exactly are you advocating? Violence?

That's true, it would be damp, but realism trumps fun, let's just pretend that shit is flammable. It's better that way. And yeah, the fire was pretty useful once it got going. Gunfight on a plain, can't see the shooters because of the tall plants... light that bitch on fire, let them ALL burn.

So, what, you think they should teach the pinnacle of bad science, creationism? Evolution may not be perfect, but at least it follows the basic principles of science- use the results to form your theory, not your theory to form your results. Creationism is saying "We believe a god created a world, let's see what things exist in the world that we can distort into supporting that view." Evolution is "this is how the world is, this is what we see when we look around us, what could that mean?" Post hoc, ergo proctor hoc- it doesn't work.

The thing is... what kinda guy is Desmond? I've been with this guy for three games (I didn't play Revelations, it looked bad to me) and I don't know what he's like. He is such a noncharacter, such a completely boring guy, that I personally don't believe he could carry a game by himself. All he knows how to do is get confused and clumsily flirt with Lucy. It's always been about the character Desmond is reliving- Altair, or Ezio. It's always been their story. Desmond is just a framing device to give the series some overarching meaning. Minor correction, AC1 was the Middle East. Heck, Jerusalem was in the game.

Man, one of the quotes on a picture in that article kinda hints that they might have dropped fire propagation... and god, I hope not. That shit was SO COOL in Far Cry 2. Lighting a few bushes and watching that fire race across the plains, burn down trees, and then ignite a propane tank was an absolute joy. I built maps in the map maker expressly designed for fucking with fire propagation.

Well, the series premise is that they're NOT just Western organization, they're part of a global, civilization-wide battle. The games have evidence of Eastern assassins in them already. Historically, you're correct, but the games don't care that much about history, only when it serves them =P