You can insult and criticize as much as you want, but don't think that you're gonna get called for it. And for the insult, it probably wasn't the most tasteful one I've done, but probably hitting close to ya anyways.

Also it seems that most people who are so against LGBT do have some skeletons in their closets wanting to get out. Wasn't there just some priest or politician who was againt gays and then did finally come out from the closet? Just saying ya know.

None of those are any kinds of tip-offs at all. So, guess you do have a gaydar in the end. Heck, not even having a Pride-pin is any clue in the end.

You do realize that people do have their own taste in style and style just doesn't tell sexual preferences at all, in most of the cases. I mean come on, piercings and tattoo a tip-off, or a somewhat popular hair style. Give me a break.

You know why people treat you like they do? It's because how you bloody act towards LGBT people, this thread clearly is evidence of that.

And lastly, not gay (at least the last time I checked my preferences), perhaps slightly bi-sexual at most. And I don't need to snipe at you, I just say it directly, you do seem like a horrible and shitty person with some major issues towards people that ain't white or straight.

Also, funny that you recognize that people will be 'assholes' towards you if the topic is about politics or religion, I think that should tell something. But whatever Bernie, thankfully your kind is a dying breed.

Phaggoat (Goat) RAMS (Sheep) Razakin in the ASS! (Donkey)
It's Super Effective!
Razakin is afflicted with BUTTHURT!

Okay, that's really ALL that I got left.

I might actually make that my namesake, just to be ironic.

I'm even thinking of commissioning an artist just to create some Phaggoat artwork!

ORIGINALCHARACTERDONOTSTEAL

...

Clearly most people don't care about what I have to say, so I'm not going to continue. Don't egg me on anymore.

This stopped being a productive conversation sometime ago.

Thread needs to be LOCKED, man.

P.S. Anybody have any contact info for this "Barthandelus" or whatever fellow people keep calling me?
Sounds like someone I'd actually be able to actually talk to.

Aaaaand Dragonfish Dog has been banned.

I suppose I'll leave the post up in case there's any question as to why.

I figure I will just jump in to to talk about a piece of media (since that was what this thread was supposed to be about) that DD keeps referencing but clearly never played and doesn't understand.

Life Is Strange spoilers kinda but yes it involves time travel, but it is about the butterfly effect and also about judging people.  You can choose to play Max as a lesbian but you DO NOT HAVE TO. The "straight, white male is the villain" is a sexual predator and guess what, Chloe's stepfather who is a straight, white male saves Max from him... because you're led early in a misdirect to think he's only an asshole but turns out he really cares and when Max's powers can't save her he does.  Chloe is a lesbian no matter how you play, but despite trying to find what happened to her girlfriend this is hardly the focus of the story (which along with the themes mentioned before, it is a story of Max reconnecting with Chloe in a real way through use of Max's powers because Chloe is fated to die).  I haven't seen you mention games like Mass Effect or Dragon Age which have gay or lesbian or bisexual characters, only difference being the relationship isn't as fleshed out?

If you went into Gone Home thinking it was supposed to be a horror game then it's really your own fault.  "Walking simulator" games don't really interest me that much since they just take a short story and drag it out, though Gone Home was my favorite of the 3 because of the tapes.  It is also the most direct story so yea "what if you came home and read your little sister's diaries as she realized her sexuality?"

We live in an age with more games than anyone could possibly play and people making games that speak to a wide variety of perspectives is not a bad thing.  There isn't hetero-bashing in either of those games.  The whole point of a work of fiction is to jump into another person's perspective and empathize with them.  You want to succeed in GTA even though if it were real life you would want these people behind bars for life, which is something Rockstar has played with and made more and more over-the-top.

I thought the characters were really well done in Life is Strange, and the plot had some great twists (Chloe's stepfather was perhaps my favorite character)! Too bad the ending was quite disappointing. Anyway, I think there probably is some truth about the stereotypical "evil white guy" in video games/movies.
http://www.giantbomb.com/evil-old-white … haracters/
Similarly you can expect the token (often black) guy to die first
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M … eDiesFirst
Of course, you have to take both of these with a grain of salt, and often these days that's not the case, but then again, sometimes it is.

Really need to buy Life is Strange before the whole game gets spoiled to me by someone on the internet by accident, and probably should install Gone Home too. Would be probably refreshing to play a game that doesn't have achievements bothering me to gather them.

That's quite an assumption to make, especially what they've already had to say about the game.

Life Is Strange is nothing new or revolutionary, and a lot of game reviewers and YouTubers have really talked it up as something that it really isn't; and some of them have either expressly recanted their views on the game, or quietly disavowed it without making too much noise about it.

First off, the game (and we're using that term loosely here) is more-or-less a ripoff (unintended or not) of a made-for-TV MTV movie (Riley Rewind; look it up on Amazon Video)

Yes, Life Is Strange borrows from a lot of things, like The Butterfly Effect (really, if you want The Butterfly Effect, then just watch The Butterfly Effect), Twin Peaks, and other teen and crime shows.

The time travel effect is purely for quickly reversing dialogue tree choices (don't you wish you could do that in other games too, instead of having to reset the game?) but it's not like they get Chrono Trigger with it; you don't get to travel in time at will.

Absolutely no choice is given to you as to figuring out where to go; it's a plot railroad of the most transparent kind, and one should think most people would be either intelligent enough to notice that, or honest enough to admit it.

The puzzles are garbage too, if you can even consider them puzzles.

As for choices, when it's marketed as a choose-your-own-adventure point-and-click game, the choices you make don't matter in the slightest; you still end up visiting all the same places and talking to all the same people, and what few things do change are purely cosmetic, anyway (like watering Max's plant, for example - and you can't even tell whether it's alive or dead until Max talks to it). The only choice that matters all game long is the very last one that determines the ending; none of your other choices contribute or build up to the ending you get.

There's the ONE choice you can botch (end of Chapter 2) that'll make/allow you to bypass one certain setting, but that's just OMITTING a part of the game. To make that choice correctly, though, you don't even need to read or exam the related character's stuff/room; you can still talk to that character and make the same choices, like you actually knew her, whether you rifled through her junk or not.

Life Is Strange is a serious big middle finger to video gamers. If you ask me, it's Dontnod's revenge for the massive flop of Remember Me; they made an incredibly linear game with a clumsy combat system that didn't sell well, so they decided to appeal to the Tumblr crowd, instead (The only thing I remember about Remember Me was how quickly it ended up in the bargain bin after it was first released).

And really, the game fails at its social activism aspect too, and only delves into the concepts of bullying, rape, suicide, etc., on high school and college campuses ankle deep, but absolutely no solutions are offered for these social ills. Just because you identify a problem doesn't mean you're deep or thoughtful; you have to offer a solution, too.

As for sexuality, all I'm going to say about that is this: I miss those days when we kept that business to ourselves, and no one was the wiser. So you're a ______-sexual. Good for you. What do you want, a medal? That's like being given a medal for taking a ______. It's a basic human function. You're not special. You're made out of the same decaying organic matter as everything else. Stop bragging about it.

I don't like the trend of video games becoming more cinematic; if I want to watch a movie, I'll watch a movie. When I want to play a game, I want to PLAY a game. Movies don't make you click on junk before revealing more of the story. A cinematic "game" is essentially a movie that makes you jump through hoops in order to tell you the plot.

Fact is, if Life Is Strange had been a movie from the get-go, no one would've paid attention to it, because there have been plenty of other movies that have touched on these same social issues before, and incorporated some sort of twist into it to make it more interesting, and have done a better job.

It's just another story of coming-of-age, and reaching sexual awakening, with a murder as a backdrop, and a time travel gimmick that vaguely allows one to classify the story as "Sci-fi."

I refute that. The Fullbright Company DID market the game (or at least game reviewers did) as a horror game; maybe not explicitly, but they loosely implied it, so that's what people expected.

That may be true. It certainly was not new nor revolutionary, but still fun and enjoyable for the most part.

Seems to me like it was quite obvious where you are supposed to go to next. The puzzles were fairly trivial, at least one was a bit annoying, but so what? Overall I thought it was a fine way to tell the story, which is what the puzzles were there for. Also, it's not a puzzle game per say as it is a movie.

Exactly! It's a choose-your-own adventure game! Thus, why bitch so much about the puzzles? Also, the choices you make to matter to an extent. True, the ending scenario happens regardless of your decisions, but they do still make some small impact.

Can't agree with that. I can understand if you don't like the game, but not every game you don't like is a "middle finger to video gamers", seriously

I never thought it was meant to inspire social activism. I mean, you're a young girl, with many young problems, and all of a sudden you find you have time-travel powers that are also destroying a city. Where does social activism come into this?

That may very well be true, but it wasn't a movie. Hate the game if you want, but don't try to make it seem as if it was meant to be something bigger than a sentimental adventure game with very limited choices. Admittedly, the ending was disappointing, but I enjoyed the journey.

If you'd grown up with the point-and-click choose-your-own-adventure games from the 80s and 90s, you'd know how much better the genre used to be, and puzzles have always been a big part of point-and-click adventure games; how else can you put challenge into a point-and-click game, other than having to figure out puzzles?

You can bet your chips social activism was part of it; when you finish Chapter 2, the ticker tape at the bottom says, "If you face any of the issues depicted in this game, find a local support group near you [insert URL here]."

Yes, part of the game was addressing social issues. Did you not watch the commentary by the developers? It was offered as free DLC.

As for media representation in general, there's always someone who's going to be displeased with how their demographic is portrayed in popular media, and even the concept that a person can "Belong" to a certain demographic category can be considered derogatory.

Which, I'll admit, no one likes feeling like their background, psychology or personality has been pinned down by anyone, much less some marketing executive board, anyway, and marketers and advertisers are kind of creepy with how in-depth they get with their research sometimes, but still reach inaccurate conclusions.

Catering to such people results in generic, Mary-Sue characters who can do everything and have no character flaws, because these characters are designed to be inoffensive (and hence no character arc) and hence aren't interesting (e.g., Rei from Star Wars Episode VII, as an example). What was even the subtitle for that movie? I don't even remember, it was such a generic re-hash of A New Hope, but with women and ethnic minorities.

Honestly, if I was either non-male or non-White, I'd still feel insulted about how I was being pandered to in our current culture/civilization/society. Not to mention Affirmative Action: You didn't get hired because you were intelligent or skillful, you just happened to have the right skin color/set of genitals. About the only worse way you could choose personnel is by randomly drawing names out of a hat. I guess you could consider it fair, because no one person is consciously making a decision, but that doesn't mean it's also enlightened,  much less responsible.

I guess this's the kind of stuff we end up talking about, when the gaming industry has taken such a downturn, and politics and social engineering are so prevalent and invasive, that we can't even escape them in our video games.

Back so soon, Dragonfish Dog/Bern?

(I did read the preceding messages before weighing in myself, you know)

Kind of lame to ban a board member just for that, too.

Life Is Strange is not the best game in the world.

It's not an opinion limited to one person.

Do you want me to rain down with YouTube links of people who didn't like the game, or can we leave it at that?

Also, it's going to suck for new members if you keep accusing them of being a single person that you don't like.

1. Only DD/Bern would think it's lame to ban someone for what he did.

2. I don't even care about what you think of the game. I haven't played it myself yet. It's your constant whining about social issues that's the problem.

3. Not as much as it sucks for old members to see the same dude coming back over and over, trying to pretend he's someone else every single time and not being able to fool anyone. That's kind of the thing here: we don't get new members very much, we just get the same dude over and over.
You come here, you spout your same bullshit every time, you get banned, and then a couple of weeks or so later, someone new pops up who has the EXACT same complaints about the exact same topics, voiced in the exact same way. Maybe this works on a forum like NeoGAF with thousands of people, but this place has like 5 regular members, so you're going to stand out.

So, I think it's important that anyone should be able to present his/her viewpoint on most things, even if those viewpoints are not the most in-vogue opinions.  Although at the same time, we should be respectful of others. Anyway, back to Life is Strange, I'm aware that lots of people did not like it, but also lots of people did. Isn't that true for most games? Not sure how raining down negative youtube videos means anything? Also, I know that lots can be made about affirmative action and other political topics. Again, you should be free to say what you want and feel (respectively), although to be fair I'm not sure this is the best forum for such topics.

When this topic was being discussed, I hadn't played Life Is Strange. On the strength of DD's recommendation, I got it. Wow, what a game. I LOVED it. The dialogue isn't fantastic but the world and characters are wonderful and I got sucked right in. Beautiful atmosphere and a character-based story that I felt was really well told.

As for whether it would have been noticed if it were a film, as already pointed out, it doesn't matter because it was what it was - a game. Would Silent Hill been as scary as a movie? Nope. The medium can't be easily separated here. Being the one to make choices in Life Is Strange makes all the difference.

Anyway, I loved it and had to track down the soundtrack CD after playing it. I may play it again soon.

That's just how I felt. And I'm a big fan of 'unexplained fantasy thrust into the real world' type stuff, so the time travel hook really helped nail it for me.
No it may be relatively simplistic on the gameplay scale, almost (though not quite) to the point of it being a 3D visual novel, but there's nothing wrong with that....

Honestly I think the problem is that too many people want to lump all video games together but I think it'd be better to classify everything under 'interactive entertainment' (or something) with games being a subset and some things being 'almost games' (of which I'd probably put LiS in) and some even being not even really games at all (a good chunk of VNs and some so-called 'walking simulators').

Yes, this. Still on second episode, but damn that I love the atmosphere of the game. Now I have the problem that I should I just play it more and more or take it easy and slow so I don't finish it in a day or two.

I binged the whole thing and I have no regrets! Yes, it didn't last long as a result but I really felt like I was living there for a few days. I was immersed in it.