World's Worst in Videogames: Sony's War on Imports Edition

Another terrible thing Sony has done, this time in the name of profits: they have officially sued importer Lik-Sang out of business (story: http://www.planetgamecube.com/newsArt.cfm?artid=12287).
Lik-Sang has been one of the largest importers for hardware and software purchases. This has especially been important in Europe and Australia, who often get games and systems months, sometimes years, after the releases in the US and Japan. Sometimes, they import games that you can only get in US or Japan.
Well, Sony didn't like that Europe can get a PS3 this year. Sony, among some others, has been hounding Lik-Sang and similar importers to keep people from buying non-local versions of consoles and games.
Why? Simply for profit. Europe, Australia, heck, every non-US/Japanese market get large mark-ups in prices. Often, games from Japan can be cheaper then local versions, despite importing fees.
The main problem I have is that this is only the first step toward trying to kill all alternative markets, including the used bins.
Those who think that digital distribution will be better are kidding themselves. Looking at Steam pricing for Half Life 2 (as listed on Steam's official site), you can spend $30 (with only Half Life 2 and its Lost Coast demo; not even multiplayer), $60 for the entire Half Life 2 collection of games, or $80 for the complete Half Life Collection (all the games from both Half Life 1 and 2). On the other hand, the current retail Game of the Year Edition is $30, and it includes all the pre-Episode 1 games (minus Day of Defeat Source).
Killing competition is a bad thing for the market. It destroys not only alternatives, but any incentive for Sony to do better. That's why Sony, once again, gets the Worst in Videogames Award.

MMO Round Up: Heroes, Guilds and WoW

I should preface this saying that before PAX, I have never played an MMO. The subscription fees just add too much for me to consider buying one. However, at PAX some people were passing out a City of Heroes trial (called the Bootleg Edition, but it was just a 15 day trial). Not too long afterwards, NCSoft put up the Guild Wars: Nightfall preview weekend, which I jumped onto. Finally, and still going, I signed up on IGN (mostly to try to get a DS Lite; failed) and got a 15 day trial of World of Warcraft. I plan on trying out some free MMOs next, including Puzzle Pirates and Annarchy Online. Also on my list will be D&D Online.

City of Heroes
Being my first experience of any MMOs, this actually was a good starting point. One major point of this game seemed to be making a more basic, easy to enter MMO. They succeeded, as the system is open enough to make fairly custom skill sets, but doesn't do anything overwhelming.
But the main point of this game is to make a silver-age comic book MMO. Between the three games, this had the most customizable character builder, at least visually. Since you don't get any armor or other set of clothing (although you can change costumes later on), you make the look of your character top-down straight off the bat.
Another good thing about this game was its group system. The developer put in a posting system, so if you want to join in a random group, you post yourself and what you prefer to do. It makes searching for teammates easier and getting into groups far better, especially if you're a quiet person.
The style of the gameplay can be described in a D&D term from the DM Guide: Kick in the Door. Simply put, 95% of the time, your job is to kick villians' butt. Few missions don't require defeating all enemies in an area. The game guides you to the locations, keeping downtime in combat to a minimum. When you get to level 14, you have the option to fly or quickly run (via The Flash) to a location, limiting amount of enemies you have to plow though to get to the cave, building, ect.
Problems: It is a kick-in-the-door style of game. If you prefer actual role-playing (via a specified server) or exploring, there just isn't much of that. The game is very combat oriented, and doesn't stray far from it.
Likely more problematic is the lack of a real PvP set up. You can go into contested zones, which both City of Heroes and City of Villians players can play on, but the low-level one I played on just didn't have very many people in it period, much less any real PvP combat.
Overall, this is a good MMO to start out on. I would recommend playing a trial first, then deciding to go full version. While it is a good MMO, I just don't think everyone would like to do more then play the trial, much less pay a subscription fee every month.

Guild Wars: Nightfall
This is the one I played the least, and not just because it was available for only three days.
The trial client was set up so then only areas that was needed were downloaded to your system. This made going to a new area a little agrevating, since it took about 10 to 15 for it to load.
Going into the game, it just felt like the designers were building a generic MMO. Sure, there were plenty of non-European influences in the environment that shook things up, but there just wasn't anything that wowed me. The world felt very generic, and missions didn't really feel profound.
What I didn't go into was the PvP mode. The game was designed to be heavy on the PvP, but I just didn't get to it. It doesn't help that my (admittingly unsupported) graphics got corrupted WHILE I was making a PvP character. The game mostly played fine, but running into corrupting drivers issues doesn't sell me a game.
If you like a PvP heavy game, this would be it for you. The lack of a subscription fee lowers the bar a bit, but I would rather play some other non-MMO game anyways.

World of Warcraft
We all know it, this game certainly has the best fanbase of any game, period. But does the game live up to the hype? Not really, but it is still a great game.
The art style is fairly similar to Warcraft 3's, but runs better then it on my computer. The character creation felt limited in how I can make my character appear, as they seem mostly reliant on in-game items for that.
The missions actually felt appropriate. There was exploration, but nothing to where I got lost or didn't know where to go. Actually, the environments were well made. From the massive cities of Stormwind to the overlayed canyons in Orggimar. If there was one thing that stands out from the rest of the pack, it was the well made environments. Exploration was an element that was just missing from the previous two games.
Combat was good, although nothing profound. Warriors felt like anything but a generic class. Druids get morphing, and other classes were just as unique from each other. Playing one was different in how I had to change strategies.
WoW is mostly commented on about its end-game content (the stuff you do when you get to level 60), something I couldn't feasably do (unlike this character: http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/624/624465p1.html).
While CoH did grouping better, I can say that this game would likely be the best choice for any would-be MMO player. It doesn't require much (if anything, you just need a half-Gig of RAM), and has the best fanbase out there.

Being Gay Does Not Equal Being a Child Predator

One of the worst things to come out of the Folley-Page scandel is some conservatives saying that homosexualality is a cause of mollestation of children. They are wrong.
The problem is that they equate sexuality with the act, which is completely wrong. As I understand it, it doesn't matter if a person is homo. or heterosexual; it is about power. The act isn't about sexuality, it is about being able to manipulate and control another person.

This is a type of thing that is exactly the same as people blaming violent media for real-life violence. It isn't about finding an actual cause for the problem, it's about blaming something other then themselves for it.
But what is worst is that this isn't about predators, but a political end. Conservatives are just using this as a bullet point against same-sex marriage, and against the gay/lesbian community in general. I just hope few will fall for it.