CAN I HAVE A MOUNTAIN DEW?!

Posts an obligatory post about being excluded as a female, sticks tongue out and flees ;-p

I don't need to click that link, since I knew what you were referencing with your cheetos remark ;) Although that is still one of my favorite DnD satires.

"I'M GETTING DRUNK, ARE THERE GIRLS THERE?"

Just making sure :) Your last post made me unsure if that was the case. God I really want to try my hand at running/playing in a game again.

RAWR MISANDRY! *obligatory bullshit post goes here*

I'm a boy, but for this giveaway: not in it.

I came in here because outside it is Cabbage Night and all the mad spirits are running loose. *doesn't flinch as a pumpkin suddenly explodes against the outside wall* But you see, boys, *pretends not to see the eggs pelting against the windows* I have come prepared for this slumber event, for it is five and twenty years ago tomorrow that I was deeply traumatized by OOH! *notices someone dropped off a pot o' honey, begins scooping the honey into his mouth like Pooh Bear* There now, where was I? Ah yes, of course, I was about to bring out the pan of special brownies and a plentiful jug of moonshine to deaden the clamor outside and to bring the focus inside.

It was three-quarters less than a century ago, at a party not unlike this, that my fellow boys and I went tricking and/or treating for sweets on Halloween Night. Our plunder was plenty but some of our number were hungry for more. So some of us stayed counting the loot and some did blunder back out the door. I was safe inside, or so I thought, but that was a mistake. Out there in the night with the spirits and ghouls was regular stuff; inside, on television, the horror I saw would never come off.

"This movie is an uplifting tale," my friend, the host, did lie, "in the end the little boy learns to fly." In truth *SPOILER* the vengeful zombie toddler leaps from the attic door to stab and bite his daddy's neck. *END SPOILER* But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part of it was that it was a rainy night and all of our soaked pants were in the dryer, so we were sitting around feeling half-naked and vulnerable in our tighty-whiteys in... *looks around, notices no one is wearing pants and one guy is in fishnets and smeared with glitter and honey* uh, in the dark and uh... look fellas, this is dragging (no pun intended) on and I just want you to watch this DVD of Pet Sematary with me so I can have like a group therapy/collective retraumatization thing happen so I can get over the horror of Zelda, who is seemingly etched into my conscious forever and ever.


A1.
My favorite game genre is anything that let's me drive cars. Doesn't matter if it's racing like FlatOut or open world like Grand Theft Auto. If visible damage accumulates and I can swing the camera around to ogle the heap, all the better. I just love skillfully driving cars like mad.

Next favorite genre is third person perspective shooters. Could be linear like Max Payne or open world like Saints Row. I just need a third person perspective to orient myself in a three-dimensional space. Really, I'll give anything with TPP a glance because good games with that perspective are few and far between.

Third favorite genre. I don't know. I've been learning more about PC games and genres since joining GOG; before that the last time I even looked at PC games was in the late 90s when I was the hotseat champ of Worms 2. So, I'm open to learning more.

A2.
Worst genre, so to speak, is first person perspective. It is disorienting: I can't tell where I'm standing; why am I two feet tall?; am I wearing blinders?; etc. First FPS game that I've seen that gives the perspective of a person greater in height than two feet is the Metro series. Hopefully GOG will acquire that so that I may give it a go.

Next worst genre is point and click adventure. I tried the Walking Dead game - that's a point and click, right? And I was drawn to it because I heard it would make me feel sad emotions, y'know, but.. bumbling about slowly with the character and then racing to choose a multiple choice answer is like some kind of meta-horror. I'll come back to it some day when I can better appreciate what the gameplay controls are trying to convey.

Third worst. Hmm. The whole swathe of medieval fantasy. I read Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and played Zelda in the 80s but it's not my thing. That fantasy subgenre seems to cover so much of PC gaming and it's all taken care of by the people who love it so I can focus my attention on games that take place during or after the Industrial Revolution.

A3.
In racing games when given the choice I'll choose the male driver because that figure represents me and he sort of disappears into the background as I'm racing. Because there's no backstory there's no narrative and no fleshed-out character to keep in mind while I'm driving. So if I suddenly see a lady driving my car when it's supposed to be a generic male homunculus who is me it can be jarring and dissociative. If there is a backstory then I'm playing a character and that is a whole different kind of game.

The one game I've played so far in which I had a character with a choice of genders was Saints Row: The Third. After the first play through as a y [url=http://youtu.be/PII5jcf950Q]Chavez/William Blake looking character - an archetype that's recognizable at least to me -I played around with other character designs and settled on making the most striking female character face I could. I then designed the finest face in any video game ever and proclaimed her the vengeful daughter of Marian from Double Dragon and proceeded to play in the style of this Billy Lee/Marian character for some time. But then I started to experiment. I began frequenting the plastic surgery clinics and clothing stores around Steelport and dressing this character up in the whole gamut of outfits from full-body wolf suit to birthday suit; hairstyles from punk rock mohawk to bouffant; emaciated ascetic to obese epicurean; law abiding muscle car enthusiast to reckless minivan maniac. At some point I realized I was playing with a doll. A sexualized, violent doll, as the characters in Saints Row are designed. But with the first male character I was sort of locked into the kind of archetypal character I had created and who is perhaps a reflection of a character I wish to be. I didn't want to stray too far out of line with that character. With the female character I was open to getting weird, trying out all the possibilities, and it was all okay. So I don't know what it all means, but there you go.


Thank you to the hostess with the mostest, ddickinson.

Tell me about it. Fantasy is capable of so much more as a genre that it pisses me off that the phrase "standard fantasy setting" even exists, and even more so when that term is used to apply to Tolkein and his low-rate knockoffs in the realm of high fantasy. I dig Tolkein, but even I will admit that his oversimplified take on basic concepts like good and evil certainly is a bit quaint, and his imitators have a nasty tendency to handle it poorly by comparison. Not nearly enough fantasy games that are analogous to say, something Niel Gaiman might have written *cough*Planescape*cough*.

Yay! Finally some fun at the boys sleepover! And no, I'm not allowing it to be a LAN party. All you boys seem to do at a LAN party is sit and stare at your computers, looking at free internet porn no doubt. You're having a good old fashioned sleepover, much more entertaining that watching some zombies staring at a glowing box :-).

Also, because he brought a box of goodies, and because he was so sweet with his birthday thread, I'm going to tape his beard back on. The girls got a little carried away during our sleepover and cut it off (sorry) after they knocked him out in the pillow fight. So now you can have it back. * Tapes beard back onto Ragnarblackmane's face *. There, good as new, sort of :-).

You sure know how to spoil a girls plan of action. Okay, fine. No mercenary. No prison sentence for going AWOL or truck load of cheap Chinese counterfeit chocolate for you! I'll just send an exploding sheep to deal with you, even if it fails, think of the mess you will have to clean up, Mwahahahaahhaha! Meanwhile I will hunt Enebias myself, there can't be that many Italian plumbing establishments run by two brothers :-). But, as he has changed his mind, all is well. I got you both to enter without harming a hair on your head, so you see, I'm no violent thug at all, just a very persuasive diplomat.

Perhaps using Swiss mercenaries was the wrong idea, you Swiss are too war hungry. Don't think we don't see you getting ready to invade your neighbours again, just like you did a few years ago to Liechtenstein. As if we believe your "it was an accident" excuse ;-).

Remember how they stealthily took over Vatican City?

Exactly. Now watch awalterj come in and explain how they are just "protecting" the Pope. I'm sure that was the same excuse Hernan Cortes gave when meeting the Aztecs, and we all know how that ended for the poor Aztecs ;-).

Careful there, if she has sheep, she might have bananas too. In this case one bunker might not be enough - watn you want is an interconnected system of bunkers.

True that, plus she might have a holy grenade or even a Betonesel (concrete donkey) so fortunately, quite a number of our bunkers are actually connected to other bunkers- much in the same way as the Alpine Marmot naturally builds its underground systems. So we can play whack-a-mole / hit the gopher all day long for a very long time.

Beware, you n00bs!
I talked a bit with the Pope about that Swiss matter, and His Sanctity decided to appoint me with the anguishing -yet necessary- task of solving the matter before the situation can degenerate. Beware, threacherous mercenaries and heretic Anglicans!
Having now received the blessing of the Church, I have access to some REAL explosive power... something that can puge the Earth from all evil - in the Grace of our Lord!
No simple banana or kamikaze nuke sheep can compare with this!


Edit: aaaargh, ninja'd! The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch is MINE!

Not in for the giveaway, just in here to answer the interesting 3 questions. And yes, I am male. Here are my answers:

Q1. What are you top 3 favourite game genres and why?

1. RPG's (of the pausable variety): I love the stories, I love fantasy settings, I love working out what spell tactics work best, I love to be able to tune the difficulty to my liking. What I like most about RPG's is mostly, you are a hero out to save the world or at least a small part of it and it's so much easier to do so as a hero in an RPG than in real life. It's extra rewarding if you start of very humble. D&D games do this right, where you're very vulnerable at level 1. My all time favourite is the Baldur's Gate series, second favourite is Dragon Age: Origins, third favourite is Icewind Dale.

2. FPS's (single player): for if I want some more fast action, to let of steam if real life gets me agitated. It has to be single-player though, for the possibility to tweak the difficulty. Battlefield 1942 did this very well with different sliders for AI, ratio of enemies vs allies and player death ticket penalty (a ticket being points that make you lose the game if they drop to zero). Recently I found out I do like story-driven FPS's as well, like the Medal of Honor games (Allied Assault, MoH 2010 and the MoH games on the PS2). It gives more sense of achievement to finish a story than to win a map.

3. Turn-bases Strategy: I do like to command armies in a game, but I'm not good at putting my attention at more than one part of the map or the game at a time, so strategy games need to be turn based or my senses get overwhelmed quickly once I proceed to more difficult maps. I like pure turn based strategy like Heroes of Might and Magic IV for the fairy-tale like world and a game with a story. I like Rome Total War for it's epic feel and the fact the campaign map is turn based while combat is done real-time, but you don't have to pay attention to both at the same time, as they are done in to completely different game-modes. And I like the combo of base-building and turn-based squad combat in X-COM.

honourable mentions goes to city-builders in the ancient world: Civ City Rome, Children of the Nile, Imperium Romanum: I like creating beautiful cities and those ancient cities where much more beautiful than any modern Sim-settings.

Q2. What are you top 3 worst game genres and why? (I'm interested to hear the ladies answer to this as well:

1. FPS (multi-player): though they are fun for the unpredictable, non-scripted action that actual human opponents give you, I as someone who plays shooters only now and then, get shot down far to easily by the experienced skilful clan-members on the Battlefield-servers (I haven't tried any other game, but I suppose it's the same: most gamers on the servers being very good in that particular game).

2. RTS: far too many things to take care of at the same time, if you stave of an attack, you're economy tankers down, if you care for you're economy, the part where you're not looking is overrun, if you attack yourself, you find yourself overrun by the time you get back with your troops tired and depleted (well, not tired, as there's no such thing in RTS's, at least not in Age of Empires and Rise of Nations). I make an exception for the story-drive campaigns of Age of Empires II: I managed to finished the El Cid campaign and it was both doable and rewarding.

3. Platformers: I so dislike the idea of making ridiculous jumps at the exact right time, that I haven't even bought any ever. Too difficult and too much unlike some world that actually could exist or has existed. I like historic settings for something that actually happened and alternative universes like fantasy games, but platformers don't even look like a world that could be, they look like games.

Q3. If you enjoy playing as a woman in games, what is it about playing as a woman that appeals to you?

Mostly I enjoy breaking the old stereotypic roles by playing woman that take on a leading role, though I adher to the stereotypes by creating women that rely on either the dexterity and wits of a robe or the studying and intelligence of a mage. I have made some sword-wielding characters in Baldur's Gate, like a human Stalker or half-orc Barbarian, but there an exception. Most of the women in my games outwit the man. Most of them are beautiful, however, my male heterosexual preferences shine through with that. The FInch mod-NPC in Baldur's Gate inspired me to make a gnome cleric-illusionist though with a squeaky voice, that wasn't beautiful at all, but very witty and compassionate. But I like my women to be saviours (just like the men). The thing I like about it, is that it's counter our (former, I hope) culture, where active saviours are men (Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela stepping up for black men, Jesus Christ introducing a new way to look at Jewish morals, Dwight Eisenhower directing the liberation of Europe), while the female saviours that are icons are saviours because of their nurturing skills (Florence Nightingale, Mother Theresa).

As a final word, play male and female protagonists just as much, but I like my female protagonists just a little bit better.