Manhunt bad ... Hostel good!

Mike K over at tooNormal has written just put a post on the Manhunt 2-AO rating issue, raising a point I didn't even notice. Probably because I don't shop at Walmart...

But I want to bring your attention to something that’s generally being overlooked by these articles. Films in the same genre as the Manhunt game. Hostel and Saw. Torture films basically. Hey look! They’re sold at Walmart. What the hell’s going on?

Soul Calibur II Sexiness

I was playing a little Soul Calibur II with my little bro today in between cutting hedges and doing some coding while back home for the weekend. I tend to 0wn him but he can and does beat me often enough that I can't take it easy on him. While choosing characters for another match he referred to Yunsung as the "flaming homosexual character." I know he didn't mean it in a derogatory way nor in a way that denigrated his abilities as he did choose him to fight and managed an excellent match. It reminded me of Sexy Videogameland's post on the topic of creating a sexual context for Soul Caliber. For the record I played Yoshimitsu against him when he played Yunsung and won the match.

My brother also got ridiculously sick at playing Ivy, who of course is one of the most sexual characters in the game. (Seriously, his record for Ivy against my Kilik this morning is in his favor) I wonder if he's imagining the same kind of pornographic subplots that SVGL was talking about. Wait, he's 17, of course he is!

BackFlash: Master of Orion

I've been playing a ton of Master of Orion (the first), with DOSBox, recently.

I love space combat 4x games, although I've played an appalling lack. Mainly this and Ascendancy. I've got Galactic Civilisations (from retail no less!) but somehow, I always end up going back to this. Somehow Galciv feels almost clunky compared to MOO. Then again, I might just be more used to the older game. Still, it feels like there is more variation is Master of Orion, but somehow it seems to be a bit more elegant. It does not feel like any element is extraneous or pointless. The space created by the game by variation of species/races, variety of game types, and just randomness of the board setup is fun to explore.

What I find very interesting about this game is how much personality each race has. The way they acted diplomatically, style of playing the board, as well as the little bits of fiction seem to mesh beautifully and vibrantly. And the oddest thing is that when playing as the one of the different races, just via their advantages you tend to get into the personality of that race. You'll feel like a Darlok, always sneaking around stealing technology and upping your computer power. What's a Darlok? Think Jawa. Anyways, I figured I let you guys know about it.

Relevant Links:

Master of Orion @Wikipedia

Jon Sullivan's MOO I Resources

DOSBox, an x86 emulater with DOS