*promote the interspecies playtime!

So much anger! Chillax, people. Just because a guy on the internet shat all over your favorite game doesn't decrease your worth as a person.

My GotY is Dark Souls, I think Battlefield games are awesome fun, and indie PC games Frozen Synapse and Magicka got most of my actual playtime this year.

I bought it on release and I've been lucky enough not to suffer more than the occasional crash and some minor weirdness. And while there was a lot of things going wrong in the game, I think it must be difficult to cover a game of this size with only a week or so of playtime and a five minute review, he could have easily spent all that time praising it or condemning it, but he took the middle road instead.
And maybe we wouldn't be so eager to come out with a child killing mod if they didn't make practically every kid in Skyrim / New Vegas / Washington DC such obnoxious little twats. I swear they must all know subconsciously that I can't do shit to them and act accordingly.

While my desktop is not as new as it could be, neither is my kids desktop - My laptop however is brand new. We run Diabo II on all three systems and play in groups together. The interface is simple enough, that my son(now 10) has been playing it since he was 6 and my daughter (now 14) since she was around 8 or 9. Only recently did we buy extra copies so we could all play together. Great bonding times with the kids

Like the addicted fool that I am, I am currently running 8 non-ladder characters and 10 laddered characters. My kids both have at least 5 characters each as well. I must also comment that my kids are straight-A students and we only play when the homework and chores are done.

Also, If you haven't played in a while, you may not know that they are still adding new stuff to the game. Like Extra hidden quests and rewards. Not that it would matter to you since you don't play it any more.

And yes, I realize there are newer games out there but I don't sink much money into games. Diablo is a new game every time. It's like the old board games (Monopoly). You can play it again and again and you don't need to toss it out after playing it once. My wife budget doesn't allow me to always buy the newest on the shelf and I'm actually ok with that

It's the multi-player that keeps us playing now. At one point, I quit playing but the kids showed an interest so we went multi-player. I hate when my kids tune out playing solo games. Interaction with others during playtime is important. I like that we can all sit in the same room and play, and talk and joke around while playing on the computer and interact on-screen.

*Working hard to raise my kids as Geeks - Fanboy Style

In reply to this comment by ant:
D2 is so old to me. I assume you have an old PC. Check out Torchlight too, but the first game has no multiplayer.

In reply to this comment by Sagemind:
Highly Adictive. Diablo 3 looks pretty good but I'm expecting it to be pay-per-use similar to WOW. I also expect it to be more processor and memory intensive than my box can handle. I'm not buying a new computer just so I can play it so I guess I'll be immune to their new brand of digital crack

In reply to this comment by ant:
Nah, it's not me. I haven't played Diablo 2 for almost a decade. I sold the games (including its expansion) to the store for $20. I am waiting for Diablo 3, but I wonder if I will even have time for it?


In reply to this comment by Sagemind:
Hey Ant,

Do you play Diablo II?

I've been playing quite a bit with my kids lately and noticed someone else on there with the user name Ant. Most likely it's just coincidence but thought I'd check just in case.

Let me know if it's you,
Cheers!

Hope junior picked up his mess after playtime was done.

furthermore, the oversexualization and base degradation of women is seen all over the media and culture at large. a lot of it can be passed off as an archetype. a lot of it seems innocuous and goes largely unnoticed. but we are incultrated from birth with a sense of our sexual identity. infants are dressed in pink or blue in case people have a hard time knowing which gender to treat them as in the first years of life. on the surface, i have no problem with pink or blue. my kids wear pink and blue. my daughters walls are pink. it's just a color.

but saying that identity is almost entirely genetic and not imposed by society is certainly naive.

there is a distinct lack of pro-social female role models for little girls in the media. girls are bombarded with images, with what to emulate as grown ups, what to pretend during playtime, how they should be. and those images are largely of the sexpot or the saint. there's very little female archetypes that embodies the middle ground. there are very few females represented by the media and marketing that are neither whores nor saints. that are just women, comfortable with their sexuality and their bodies, but not consumed by it either. women in movies rarely talk to other women in movies and those conversations are very rarely about anything other than men.

i'm reading the golden compass to my daughter right now. and it's a rocking book for little girls. phil pulman is an atheist novelist who noticed there were no kickass female protagonists in kid stories. and that the only action/adventure/fantasy novels were judeo/christian in nature, see narnia. so he wrote a book for his daughter.

the protagonist is a badass little girl. she goes on an epic battle against the oppressive church, fights the forces that want to control the masses with imposed morality and sexual repression. at the end of the series, she finds and kills god. everyone should read this shit to their kids. it's amazing.

@spoco2 i highly recommend reading it to your little girl when shes older.

it's also helped initiate an age appropriate "what is sex" talk with my daughter. in the beginning of the first book they use the word "sex" as like, the biological sex, male vs female. and my daughter stopped me and asked "which kind of sex are they talking about" ... so i realized she's picked up on the existence of the act of sex and has probably been formulating her own ideas about it.. so we've been slowly having the "talk". it's terrifying and awesome.

i don't feel like there has to be a difference in the rhetoric and the reality. and find that statement kind of cynical.

my kids are allowed all kinds of crazy freedoms with their hair and dress and expression and creativity and language and their interests are almost always highly encouraged by me and my tribe.

princesses weren't a non existant part of playtime when my daughter was younger, at that point i thought it was an archetype and all little girls go through that phase. and i still kind of think that. but i think it can be overly nurtured in ways that are obnoxious. anyway, princess phase was short lived and generally took a back seat to her desire to be a fairy or a piano playing shark. i could think of million reasons to hate barbies, but i decided not to, she has barbies ... she just isnt real interested in them. bratz dolls are actually just amazingly whorey and negative and are just way overboard, so.. fuck no. she's too old for them now anyway.

my biggest issue is over commercialization, so we simply have no television. they watch movies and what not. and actually i feel like limiting the television and commercialization has helped them development loads of creativity. which is actively encouraged around here. it's totally possible to imbue your kids with your values without forcing your political agenda down their throats.

i'm extremely interested in how much of my kids personalities and social skills are due to their lack of exposure to what's "trendy" and how much of it is just inherent. . my niece is the same age as my daughter, she's been hooked on the disney channel since birth. "fitting in" and keeping up with trends and being "like" her peers is extremely important to her. my kid couldn't care less. but that was also the difference between her mom (my sister) and i when we were kids.

i used to worry more about my son being able to fit in with more mainstreamed peers. seeing as we have no television, he knows 0 about spiderman or transformers or sports, he has 0 male role model to emulate and has been raised entirely by a bunch of women. but he's having no trouble "fitting in" with other boys. my daughter on the other hand is having loads of issues with socialization. she has no interest in what other 8 year old girls seem to be interested in. honestly, at this point, if hannah montana would help her make friends, i'd consider getting cable. but she just thinks it's stupid.

i'm interested to know if that's her just being a mature, heavily artistic, tomboy, with a dose of shyness or if the persona's of little girls are just so entirely shaped by television and trends that she's finding it impossible to relate them without it. i suspect its probably a bit of both. and i find the latter extremely sad.

>> ^blankfist:

@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://kids.videosift.com/member/spoco2" title="member since August 21st, 2006" class="profilelink">spoco2, good point. But I'd have to wonder why I'd want to stop him or her from following what they want even if it's trendy. Is it because of how I feel about it? If so, that's not a very good reason at all.
I dislike commercialization like the next guy, but is it fair for me to push my own personal politics onto my child? I say no. Sure, wearing high heels at five may be a bit extreme, but most parents use those extreme examples as justification to stifle their children's self-expression at less extremes. In other words, the rhetoric is "my five year old daughter is not wearing heels" but then in reality it's "my ten year old son is not getting a faux-hawk/mohawk" or "my daughter is not getting a Barbie doll".

I agree 100% with the Turks on the messedupedness of this move by the school, but as a teacher I occasionally have to call kids out for coming in obviously blazed and unable to deal. Take them aside, find out what's going on, remind them that playtime is for after you finish your homework, etc. Now, if I were teaching Studio Art... different story.

>> ^Zyrxil:

What kind of player doesn't even have a playtime display? Anyway, the fuel truck pushing a sideways car about 3/4 through the video was the most ridiculous and unbelievable one.


And also the best documented http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/8579523.stm

What kind of player doesn't even have a playtime display? Anyway, the fuel truck pushing a sideways car about 3/4 through the video was the most ridiculous and unbelievable one.

You'll start to really appreciate these annual Disney movies again once you have kids and want to introduce them to the whole cinema experience. A huge upside is the playtime, which rarely went on for longer than an hour and a half; The time limit for most kids' patience.

I'm not sure I'm cool with dropping $40 on an expansion with dramatically less playtime than the original, though. It seems its almost an uber DLC rather than a true expansion and with the prices of the current DLC content, it bothers me how much Bioware is soaking it's fanbase.

I bought the game, but no DLC as after playing the included stone prisoner code that came with it and seeing how they wanted to charge $15 for what little it actually offered, I was turned off of plunking down for Warden's Keep. Maybe $5, but not $15 considering I only paid $50 for the game.

I had high hopes of seeing more community map pack creations out there, but it doesn't look promising.

I go to work
Like a doctor
When I rock the mic
You got to like
The way I operate
I make miracles happen
Just from rappin'
I'm so lyrically potent
And I'm flowin'
And explodin'
On the scene mean
I got the potential
To make you go
Then chill
I got the credentials
That is of which I chose
To make a rhyme
And chill
Then you know
I will fulfill
To make a couple of mill
As I build a guild
For all the rappers and skills
And kill the weak rappers and no thrills
Hang 'em an ephigy
If he's a sucker
Hang 'em to the left of me
Cause my right hand man
Is my mic stand and
The microphone that I own
And my game plan
Is keeping at a steady pace
Ain't no need for a rush
It ain't no race
I'ma hit the top
Just when I wanna
And it's a matter of time
And I'm gonna
Cause I know when to
Go 'head enter
The classic Moe Dee rap
That sent ya
Runnin' around
Holdin' ya head
Askin' ya homeboy
Yo man
You hear what he said
Another funky rhythm
Look at ya man
And give him a high five
Cause I'm live
Runnin' around with him
Telling everybody
Hanging out on the block
It's time to wake up
And check the clock
Punch it
I go to work
I go to work
I go to work
Like an architect
I build a rhyme some times it climbs so erect
Skyscrapers look like atoms
Cars electrons rollin' in patterns
Writing out word after word
With each letter it becomes visably better
Cause my foundation built a nation of rappers
And after I came off vaction
I came to roam
The land I own
And stand alone on the microphone
Daddy's home
Open the door playtime is over
Time to go to work and show the
Suckers in the place who run their face
The base and a taste of who's the ace
Start the race
I'm coming in first
With each verse
I build a curse
So rappers can't capture Moe Dee's rapture
After I got ya
I have to slap ya
Senseless with
Endless rhymes don't pretned this
Is anything short of stupendous
And when this rhyme is done
Your mind will become
So trapped in the rap
You'll lust on another one
You gotta wait it takes time
I don't write I build a rhyme
I draw plans draft the diagrams
An architect in effect
And it slams
And if it's weak when I'm done
Renovate and build another one
I go to work
I go to work
I go to work
Like a boxer
Train the brain and aim
To out fox ya
Like a punch my rhyme knocks ya
Some times it rocks ya
So hard it stops ya
Dead in your tracks
So power packed
Before you can react
You're flat on your back
Down for the count
Get up and dismount
Cause I'm coming
With an endless amount
Of words in a hurry
Like a flurry
A collage to camouflage
The power punch but don't worry
Knowledge is an antidote
I got hand of smoke
Writing at the speed of light with insight
I wrote
Rhymes at a level
So you can't relate
Unless you're intelligent
So stay awake
Sleepwalkers
Slick talkers
This time a native New Yorker's
Riding a crescendo wave to save the mental
State of the fan so he can understand my pencil
Rhymes in its highest form
I'm a drop it on ya like a bomb
When it explodes I'll blow up
A few casualties but so what
If you're slow
You blow
You know you go
I flow
I throw all pro
I go to work
I go to work
To say rap is not work
Is ludicrous
Whoever said it
Must be new to this
When you hear me
You'll compare me
To a prophet for profit
Not merely
Putting words together for
Recreation
Each rhyme's a dissertation
You wanna know my occupation
I get paid to rock the nation
I go to work
I go to work
I go to work

In reply to this comment by Payback:
Everything's fun until someone gets an angry ferret stuck on their face.
No, thats still pretty fun.

Love the disclaimers.

I'm pretty skeptical on this game to be honest. Looks a bit too much like Oblivion, and I can't see that kind of turn based system being all that fun for the kind of playtime they're offering. Ah well, only time will tell. Dunno, if I were them I would have stuck with the isometric view just like Blizzard did with D3.