Video Game News: 25 Invisible Benefits of Gaming While Male.

You know what? I'm bored, I'm having a quiet night, I may or may not have been drinking.

Do you know what that means? Let's go for the low-hanging fruit again and let's keep taking a crack at it until the back pain causes me to collapse.

Feminism. Feminism in video games.

So Anita Sarkeesian, my complete BFF, has made yet another video called:

"25 Invisible Benefits of Gaming While Male"

So she wants all male gamers to check their privilege whilst playing the video games.

In this episode/review/whatever the hell it is that I do, I'm going to refute all 25 dumbass points like a shaolin monk displacing backhands thrown by a toddler.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E47-FMmMLy0

Here's the link, so feel free to play along at home by laughing.

1. "I can choose to remain completely oblivious, or indifferent, to the harassment that many women face in gaming spaces."

Well you're kind of making it hard, actually. You should probably stop. Like, I love how this one doesn't refer to "players" or "developers" just "women in gaming spaces" as if there is an actual place, somewhere in the world, and women who are either playing video games, making video games or being near video games are being attacked by men. Stay away from those gaming spaces! 

Also, what harassment? 

2. "I am never told that video games and the surrounding culture is intended for me because I am male."

Hey there, lil Johnny, just remember that whilst you play that them there interactive games there, you remember those corporate boards who went through a list of demographics and made games that catered to males solely because a large proportion of males were playing those games and would thus appeal to them!"

"Gee whiz, pa! I sure will."

Fucking retard.

Like, I mean really? Are we honestly doing this? Girls don't play videos games. At least not in the sense you're referring. They don't. Hands up for who plays video games. Everyone, good. Now put your hand down if it's Angry Birds. Now put your hand down if it's an iOS game. Now put your hand down if it's not on a home console. Now put your hand down if you don't sink lots of hours into those games.

Mostly men and a cluster of women.

Good, grand. See how many people I made put their hands down proving the fact that video games are less insular than ever? Lots! And the main community hub of console gamers playing their triple A titles (who aren't even a main gaming hub) is mostly men. 

They are and I'm sorry. No wait, I'm not sorry, fuck you.

And the women don't particularly care anyway, nor are they constantly victimised. 

They just want to play Call of Duty until they are completely sleep deprived because it's fun and they're probably good at it too.

3: "I can publicly post my username, gamer tag or contact information online without having to fear being stalked or sexually harassed because of my gender."

Why the fuck would you put your contact information online? I don't care what goolies you have where, it's just dumb as a bag of rocks to do that, you madman.

And c'mon, really? Wanna know my original username for my first PS3 that I shared with my brother? Sniperwolf24.

Is that male or female? 

Exactly, you don't know.

If you want to make a gamer tag or username with your name and gender and then chat on the mic, then there are going to be some dirtbags who will give you a hard time. Strangely, people who are in the comfort of their own bedrooms, are socially ruined and have problems talking to normal males will react negatively to you putting your gender out there.

Just, why do you need to? I'm not a male online. I don't make my username Blokedude32 and talk on the mic about what a man I am and how I do manly things. Just.... why be anything online? Why not accept that the online world of gaming is supposed to be largely gender-neutral grounds? 

Am I wrong? Yes?

No, you're right, I'll round up every strange and socially-ostracised neck beard I can find and turn them into well-rounded gentlemen of distinctive character.

4. "I will never be asked to prove my gaming cred, simply because of my gender."

Nobody does that. Nobody who actually has any relevance in the world says that. 

But I get asked to prove my cred all the time. In Warcraft, I'm not allowed to raid with my guildies unless I'm Level 100 and my item level is i600. You're not alone, lassies.

5. "If I enthusiastically express my interest in video games, nobody will automatically assume I'm faking my interest just to get attention from other gamers."

Sometimes, women do.

This is because video games are now more socially acceptable, gaming cons sometimes hire floor models and lots of women can make money from doing so.

Have some links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLAeW4GjuSw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT5bcpuWtYM

But nobody who is sensible will attack smart businesswomen or female gamers who genuinely are enthusiastic.

They will say "Ok. I like the video games too and we should play some now because I haven't played video games for thirty minutes and need to play one right now."

6. "I can look at practically any gaming site, show or magazine and see the voices of people of my own gender widely represented."

Went on all my favourite gaming websites, went on all my favourite forums.

Oh look, unisex usernames and default pictures. 

Let's assume they are all male anyway.

It's fair enough, I guess. Males buy video games, shareholders look at stats, game sites cater to males because they have the money.

I'm sorry society is its own reflection, you bunch of whining pansies.

7. "When I go to a gaming event or convention, I can be relatively certain that I won't be harassed, groped, propositioned or catcalled by total strangers."

You can, although it is incredibly sad that one or two male gamers let the side down by being jerks.

Just like you guys let your side down by being radical feminists.

This is too easy, I may have to stop or take a break.

8. "I will never be asked or expected to speak for all other gamers who share my gender."

That's great 'cuz I'm not going to. And neither is anyone going to speak for a large group or be asked to.

Because that's not even about sexism, that's just plain insanity.

I want to know if there are any female gamers who have been stopped in the middle of gaming, or at a convention, by a large rotund male with sweat patches who asks you to tell him why all women are all plotting on all ruining video games from a two-year old girl in Massachusetts to a fifty-year old Incan tribeswoman.

That person is not just a sweaty neck beard. They need serious psychiatric help.

9. "I can be sure that my gaming performance, both good and bad, won't be attributed to, or reflect on, my gender as a whole."

Basically, Anita is mad she can't quickscope.

I don't think anyone actually has said that my kd ratio on a shooter, DPS recount on an MMO or just about anything else, has anything to do with the junk currently located in or around my trunk.

Again, nobody worth listening to.

10. "My gaming ability will never be called into question based on unrelated, natural, biological functions."

"You can't kill the enemy because you're too busy having a vagina."

"I bet you wouldn't have failed that escort mission if you'd had a mastectomy."

Again, only the words of the crazed and the lunatics.

11. "I can be relatively sure my thoughts about video games won't be dismissed or attacked based solely on my tone of voice. Even if I speak in an obnoxious, aggressive, crude or flippant manner."

If I talk aggressively about video games, that is a mere bitter blossom from my passion towards it.

And people do talk shit about the way I talk shit all the time.

If I go on any message board right now and express my views, I will have someone who calls me a dickhead and that my views are wrong and then I call them something flavourful and we exchange slurs and ideas until the thread 404's.

Nothing to do with gender. You have a view? Defend it or you get no sympathy.

12. "I can openly say that my favourite games are casual, odd, non-violent, artistic or cute without fear that I am reinforcing a stereotype that men are not real gamers."

I love the imaginary female in this scenario, flustered over how her affinity with Spore is somehow stopping all women from playing video games forever and banning them from every form of media entertainment.

If you're a woman and you're a gamer, you don't wait around for some sort of letter of acceptance, some sort of accreditation. You're probably already playing video games, looking up bewilderedly from your controller like the rest of us and wondering who the hell these people are and why they are so offended and oppressed.

13. "When purchasing most major video games in a store, chances are I will not be asked, or assumed to be, buying it for a wife, daughter or girlfriend."

Picked up Little Big Planet 3, was immediately asked if it was for my girlfriend.

Chances were against me, next question.

14. A vast majority of game studios, past and present, have been led and populated primarily by people of my own gender and, as such, most of their products have been specifically designed to cater to my demographic.

Yeah, buy more games then.

Yeah, develop more games then.

Yeah, you're already doing that.

Not you, person who is making this list of 25 asinine "benefits", person who didn't ask petty questions and actually wanted to play video games in the first place, went in headfirst without a care at all and is probably in the same boat as me in hating these people who are can't even brush their teeth without getting offended/triggered/mentally raped.

15. "I can walk into any gaming store and see images of my gender widely represented as powerful heroes, dastardly villains and NPC's alike."

Kinda looks like a big library of stories made by people who cared very much about issues very dear to them. Maybe you should stop telling those people how to tell their stories as they clearly know much more than you. =')

16: "I most always have the option of playing a character of my gender, as most protagonists or heroes  are male by default."

Remember the time I took Portal, Mirror's Edge, Chainsaw Lollipop, Bayonetta, Metroid, Tomb Raider, Oni, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, Catherine, Alice: Madness Returns, Left 4 Dead and 105 other games back to the store because I had to play as a woman to advance the plot?

You don't? Is that because that didn't fucking happen? You are right, friend.

17. "I do not have to carefully navigate my engagement with online communities in online gaming spaces in order to avoid or mitigate the possibility of being harassed because of my gender."

Stay away from those online gaming spaces on that dastardly world wide web on the video home console, kids!

Seriously, for most questions "Because of my gender" seems a little bit tacked on.

are you sure you're not just being really difficult?

And I have to navigate carefully too. I was on Warcraft and accidentally repaired my armour using the guild bank and had to explain to the guild leader that I misclicked.

It was fucking intense, but I didn't decide to become a minority out of spite.

18. "I probably never think about hiding my real life gender through my gamer name, my avatar choice or by muting voice chat from fear of harassment for my being male."

I do! I want to escape! On earth I may be Charlie, but online I can be Priscilla, Queen of the Araqniqids in Call of Skyrim in the League of Legends and I will wear beautiful petticoats and refuse to take this question seriously.

19. "When I enter a game, I can be relatively sure I won't be attacked or harassed if and when my real life gender is made public."

When you presumably plan for it to go public, remind everyone multiple times on voice chat, spam messages insisting that you're female and tell everyone to stop hitting on you when they start to complain about migraines from the incessant "I'm a girl gamer please respect me in specific ways that I like."

20. "If I am trash talked or verbally berated whilst playing online, it will not be because I am male. Nor will my gender be invoked as an insult."

Of course it will, they'll insult the size of my manhood like everyone online has always done ever since the first ethernet cable was hooked up. 

Any gender can be insulted. Deal with, yo.

21: "Whilst playing online with people I don't know, I won't be interrogated about the size and shape of my real-life body parts, nor will I be pressured to share intimate details of my sex life for the pleasure of other players."

"Show us or we don't believe you and think you've got a tiny tackle and can't please any women." - Any male gamer to any other male gamer.

22: "Complete strangers generally do not send me unsolicited images of their genitalia or demand to see me naked on the basis of being a male gamer."

I wish they would sometimes though. I think we all do.

23: "In multiplayer games, I can be pretty sure that conversations between me and other players will not focus on speculation about my attractiveness or sexual availability in real life."

I once joined a lobby in Call of Duty in which an Iranian tried to tell me about how his orange plantation would make him a billionaire and how he'd hire hitmen on every other person on the matchmaking list once he'd become a billionaire.

Expect anything.

24: "If I choose to point out sexism in gaming, my observations will not be seen as self-serving and will therefore be seen as more credible and worthy of respect than those of my female counterparts even if they are saying the exact same thing."

said the man in the video, who was given that script specifically to say, by a woman who gave the man the script because she personally believed that if she read the script out herself she'd be seen as self-serving.

Calling the kettle black, indeed.

We don't think you're self-serving anyway, Anita. You don't even play video games.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afgtd8ZsXzI

25: "Because it was created by a straight white man, this checklist would likely be taken more seriously than if it had been written by any female gamer."

No.

That is my final argument and magnum opus.

No.

No, feminism in videogames in not a thing. Good day.

Browser Game Reviews: Idle Games.

I thought I'd do things a little differently today by mentioning three games that you can play right now, in your browser, without downloading anything.

I thought, why the hell not? I waste enough of my time playing them so surely the fact that I do not need to put a disc in a machine, wait an hour for downloaded content and hotfix patches like LittleBigPlanet 3 this afternoon and spend inordinate amounts of time staring at loading screens shouldn't stop me from writing about them on my blog.

In this special feature, I'm going to be covering Idle Games.

What are Idle Games? They're rather games that you don't play. Games you buy upgrades for and then wait as an incremental score ticks up and up and allows you to buy more upgrades to get the number higher and higher.

You have probably already heard of Cookie Clicker and given that a good go, so I will keep it off the list. The titan deserves no more credit until it gets a few more updates.

In any case, here they are.

#3: Progress Quest: www.progressquest.com

Progress Quest is, in essence, a text-based idle-game RPG. Once you're on the site, click play and you'll be taken to the character creation screen where you choose attributes and random names and all that gubbins. From then on, you're pretty much done. You then watch as Progress Quest plays the game for you as you kill random enemies and receive random loot of various rarities before heading back to town to negotiate the purchase of better equipment.

It comes complete with a Windows '95 background and won't progress if you alt tab or otherwise open another browser.

#2: Kittens Game: http://bloodrizer.ru/games/kittens/#

Called the "Dark Souls" of the Idle Game genre due to its extreme unending length and harshness, In Kittens Game you are a Kitten and you press a button to harvest Catnip. You can then either make Catnip Fields by planting the Catnip to make more Catnip or Refine the Catnip into Woods to make Huts.

Fields do well in Spring but poorly in Winter and your Kittens will die due to Catnip shortages if you do not plant enough.

You then do other things including learning science for cultivation and other things with Scholar kittens once you have room for them, or you could get more Wood with Woodcutting Kittens and so on, but you'll have less Kittens to haves Catnip so they'll all die in Winter if you haven't thought long and hard about your Catnip resources.

The official wiki is endless. 

http://bloodrizer.ru/games/kittens/wiki/index.php?page=Main+page

#1: Clicker Heroes.

www.clickerheroes.com

Dun-dun, duddah duh duh. Stuck in my head since early this year.

Maybe it's the cutesy graphics or the way its made but it's just so frackin' addictive.

This game is just the bomb. You click enemies and they die and you get coins. with the coins, you buy heroes. Heroes give you upgrades which lets you kill bigger things. Get a certain number of Heroes and you get Hero Souls, reset the game and you get +5% damage for each Hero Soul you have OR you can use them to get Godlike Powers from Ancients which give you permanent buffs throughout all subsequent playthroughs. Get over Level 100 and every five new levels you will receive a random buff to a Hero which changes their art style and makes them twice as powerful, a buff that also remains through new playthroughs and there's a bunch of achievements as well which gives you extra permanent bonuses.

It's amazing.

But the best bit? When you save and click off it, the game keeps killing enemies and gathering coins for when you next turn the game on due to your save being saved in a cached script on your computer.

The wiki has thousands of helpful tips:

http://clickerheroes.wikia.com/wiki/ClickerHeroes_Wiki

It also has an Official SubReddit and community if you're the type of person who frequents those lesser sorts of websites.

http://www.reddit.com/r/ClickerHeroes/

Enjoy gaming, folks. I'll be back with an instalment of the best free browser MMO's after the cut.

Video Game Review: Little Big Planet 3.

So without any fanfare at all, Little Big Planet 3 dropped out of nowhere. No ads, no forum debates, no real newsworthy sites discussing it.

Little Big Planet is a platforming game that allows you to create your own platforming games and has been insanely popular with over eight million levels made by the community. It has a Story Mode and a Create Mode. You collect materials, decorations and stickers in the story mode to use in the create mode.

Its first and second iterations were made by Media Molecule, but the third has been made by Sumo Digital, an independent UK company based in Sheffield.

I'm going to go ahead and spoil this for you right off of the bat, despite the fact that I'm usually expected to play it out and make jokes and be humorous.

The game is buggy and unplayable. I wish I was exaggerating when I say unplayable. The game is literally stuck in the same space.

There were initial problems that were minor such as not being able to place down stickers or things in Create Mode that would have been annoying but otherwise fine. After the December 4th patch, the game items at the end of each level haven't loaded at all and are impossible to pick up. On some sections, my character won't move. There are lag problems, there are problems with the voice acting cutting out suddenly, basic AI won't work, features from the second game won't work, one particular section is presenting me with an end-of-level scoreboard that freezes the game entirely.... I could go on. The point is that I paid £49.99 for this game and it's just really, really bad.

Which is why nobody's discussing it probably.
People who don't like it aren't even being decried as haters, it's just that nobody bothered to pick the game up and the few that did were severely disappointed.
I don't think I missed any reviews. They only started coming in after I bought the game and took it home.

I could give you a blow-by-blow account of the limited story experience I had with the game along with the new banal characters or the out-of-place voice acting or the lack of charm in general, but instead, I'd like to make a point of just asking why this game was released in that state.

Why is it ever ok to release a buggy or unfinished game? If you did that a while back, hell even in the early 00's, you'd have your game canned and you'd be laughed out of your studios for not keeping up with video game progression.

Now people keep defending shoddy publishers saying "It'll be better when it's patched." "It'll be better when they improve it."

Well guess what, fuckfaces, I would be better if I improved into someone who went to the gym five times a week, owned twelve mansions and fifty-nine cars. But are we all going to delude ourselves into thinking that I am that because I, like every other dumb person on this scuzz-rock we call Earth, have the potential to do that?
No. BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE PSYCHOTIC. I CANNOT STRESS THAT ENOUGH.

Seriously! Devs and publishers who are bankrolled have so much money these days they put a video games critical or public failure down to a lack of marketing budget.

Don't believe me? Why the fuck is Paul McCartney singing in Destiny then?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=163_C5UVU-I

I hope you're listening to that as you read these words, and imagining those men in suits who just think that if they throw money at a problem and tell people that they're not owed anything then they'll just shut up and buy more, and consume more and be quiet.
And it's sort of working. People have Xbox Ones and PS4's despite the fact we've had over a whole year of new consoles and nothing to show for it.

You are owed something. A better game. A polished and finished game you paid for.

Titanfall is a multiplayer demo missing a campaign. Not a "A next-generation competitive multiplayer title that blurs the lines between traditional online shooters and single-player campaign." - Game Informer
Watch Dogs is a GTA-like with poor vehicle handling and a weak story. Not the "Best and most innovative game ever made." - Reddit forums.
Destiny is a failed MMORPG that needs you constantly online or otherwise will not work and feels half-done. Not The next evolution of the first-person action genre that provides an unprecedented combination of storytelling, cooperative, competitive, and public gameplay, and personal activities that are all seamlessly woven into an expansive, persistent online world.  - Destiny official site.


I just don't see why we're allowed to be lied to as much as we are about the specs of the game, the downgrading of graphics and content and all other matters.

If it was a tin of soup, a DVD, a comic, a book, a magazine or any other product, item or intellectual comestible, it would be illegal.

But it's only video games so who cares, right?

(Footnote, I will be continuing a review of this game when I can actually complete the level and will do reviews of both the new Create Mode and new Story Mode. However, neither work functionally yet.)