Haven't played it yet, only read about the game so far and saw some footage. I already own it, though, so I may take a look sooner or later.

In Road to Hill 30 there was only one in-game sequence where you would *hear* a woman talk from behind a door:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsospDKMGCo&t=14m25s
You would not ever see a civilian in the game, however. I'm quite sure that the same is true for Earned in Blood (where I have only beaten about 3/4s of the campaign).

Also the Brothers in Arms Wiki states about Hell's Highway: "Civilians are now included in the game, but they cannot be shot. " which confirms that civilians were not present in earlier installments.

Looks very interesting and fairly accurate at first glance.

What I may do is post the lot into a Word document and use the comment function to provide feedback, if that's OK. This is how I usually peer review documents and the "PR+" method seems a little unwieldy for me.

Oh crud, indeed. I seem not to have gotten a reply notification on that and somehow missed that one particular post while reading pretty much everything else. Crap, sorry.

Yes, the scene with heroic Adam can have that interpretation, too. However, the whole scene is structured in a way that goes against Samus as a powerful and resourceful heroine. For example, Adam is able to subdue her ridiculously easily. He comes out of nowhere and with a shot she is defenseless. If sacrifice is the only way, why can they talk it through, without having to incapacitate Samus? Soldiers are supposed to be prepared to take hard decisions with a cold attitude. But, nope, Samus can't do that, she would not allow Adam to sacrifice himself, she is too emotional, you know, like girls tend to be.

For me the whole scene is definitely wrong in a sexist way. We even see a similar scene with the younger Samus loosing it when another soldier has to die, it's as if she has not matured at all as a soldier, which was what she was supposed to prove to Adam. And the reason Adam has to sacrifice himself is very shady too, but that is more of a technical problem.

And no, I don't think that if you are a girl that is trying to prove that you are as good a soldier as any men, you will allow any of your peers to call you "princess".
There is a bit of that in Bioshock 2. The endings depend on how many of three important characters you kill or spare, but Elanor does not seem to notice the hundreds you have killed before.

Thanks!, I'll give it a look.

Wait what? And she was a female!? You two are definitely trying to ruin my conclusions, :D

Crap!, now I'm remembering Velvet Assassin too. And Bloodrayne, but that definitely doesn't count. Will have to revise some stuff here and there.
Works for me, thanks.

On the "subduing Samus too easily" part, she had just been attacked by Metroids in that scene, hadn't she? (Can't quite remember...) I'll give you the other points, though. Take a closer look at my post. In Metroid Fusion (a 2001 game), there's an elevator scene where Samus talks about how Adam Malcovich died saving her life. All that was missing was the where, the when, and the how. Like I said, he was written to die. Other M just filled in the gaps. I would agree with this, but only if the storyline didn't clearly establish the fact that Anthony had great respect for Samus. When she was thinking about her past (the incident that made her choose to leave the Federation), Anthony told her, "C'mon, you were just a pup then."

Also, you have to keep in mind Samus' origins. Her utter fear of Ridley stems from the fact that, as a child, she saw him and the Space Pirates murder her parents and destroy the space colony she was born on!

Having destroyed Zebes, she thought that Ridley, her archrival, could never return. Yet he loomed before her in Other M. Who wouldn't be afraid?

As for her deciding early on not to use her advanced weapons systems at the get-go, bear in mind that the Federation was already there when she arrived, and that, even though Samus is a bounty hunter, she still works with the Federation on occasion. She would abide by their rules.

No, I don't oppose Adam sacrificing himself, it's a legitimate story element, but I think that the scene is seriously wrong for the reasons I have given.

In general, my conclusion is not that MOM is sexist (other than the typical "all female characters are busty and fragile looking schoolgirls"), it's that there are suspicious elements, but that they can be interpreted otherwise and there is no statistical data to arrive to any rigorous conclusion.

And the idea that Samus will abide by Federation rules makes a lot of sense, although they should have explained it better. In fact, they don't really say that is the reason so the effect is that many people don't understand why Samus submits to Adam.

Ok, I have taken most of your contributions taken into consideration. Thanks for the effort!

This one has taken a lot of work, and I haven't even finished.

It is not terribly complicate to create AI that runs and hides from a tank or surrenders when the odds are minimal. They can even throw some interesting dialog at the player in the vein of "Get out of my country" or "you can't defeat us because our cause is noble" or whatever goes with the theme. Depends on the tone of the game (I'm not against the existence of mindlessly violent games per se), but even in the silliest, less mindful games there is a lot that can be made so the enemies are not completely suicidal and the only possible progress path is to kill them all.

Good idea. It seems I didn't think about it too much.

Did I talk about shooter in particular? Anyway, I have reworded it so there is no need for sources. I believe there is an obvious excess of violent and mindlessly violent games, and the fact that, as common knowledge says, big publishers are all about reducing risks, pitching violent games should be way easier.

By the way, EA releases around 5 shooter per year (including Mass Effect and Dead Space, which are shooters to an important extent) and Activision does have plenty of shooters too (CoD, James Bond licenses, Singularity and Transformer). And that is only the shooters, violent games in general are even more.

Well, I have a hard time to understand why combat is the easiest way to design a game based on the idea that computers are well suited for space simulation. My opinion is that more violent games are done because a) we live in the culture of spectacle, everything has to be action oriented and as explosive as possible and that sells because psychology and b) violence began as a common theme on a medium highly focused on male teenagers and, as the medium became more industrial, this theme was kept in order to recycle all the technology and ideas already developed, regardless of its aging audience. b is basically "games are cheaper to make if they are violent", which is the summary of what you and Chris say. Although he presents it as an excuse: developers just have to do violent games because technology.

But it is not true at all. Imagine if video games had focused on platforming and imaging that more effort had been put on platforming in 3D. Now we would have plenty of games in which the feeling of platforming in 3D was completely polished. Mirror's Edge and Assassin's Creed work pretty well. Why did Mirror's Edge needed so much violence? Why is Uncharted series not about a guy who has no idea about guns or fighting but still does a lot of climbing and putting himself in "spatially complicated" situations to find treasures? Why are there no more triple A games like Portal?

We can talk about adventure games too, in particular graphic adventure games. How are those games technically difficult to make? They are not, but they did not sell too well, because killing and shooting was easier to market than "use your brain and take your time". So big publishers just killed them. And there is no reason why graphic adventures could not have evolved to a more space-based gameplay (in the vein of Thief or Penumbra, maybe).

Not convinced on the "violence because technical reasons" argument, sorry, although the video made me think hard.