I know the game hasn't been released yet, and I might not play it, but EA (the games developer) already might be in trouble.

While hanging around Digg and Kotaku, I found out that EA has shipped out a Godfather 2 press kit which included a set of brass knuckles.



At first I thought this was kinda cool. I have taken an advertising class, and usually movies or video games have elaborate press kits.

For example, I work at my schools newspaper and we get these press kits all the time.

Last year, we received a press kit for the fourth Indiana Jones movie. The kit included a hat, and whip which was epic cool.

Well, EA now wants the knuckles back because they are illegal in many of the states that they were shipped to. They're also illegal in California, where EA is based.

Two things!

One. They should have not used real ones and maybe made them as paper weights or something.

Two. The people they sent them two wouldn't really use them. I would have kept it as a collectible. I didn't use the whip.

...

OK I take that back. I used it with my girlfriend, and she was cool with it.

Writing this while my girlfriend is looking over my shoulder and beating me.

Aaron

PS

Link to article.

http://kotaku.com/5207521/ea-ships-illegal-weapons-to-press-wants-them-back

Looking back on Pokémon, I remember all the money I wasted on the damn fad (acutely all the money my parents wasted). Occasionally I find myself playing red or blue once in a blue moon.

I have realized recently, as someone who abhors animal cruelty, I found it ironic that this game made cockfighting ok.

While in New York, I learned at the Nintendo store that a new Pokémon game was released.

I had said to myself “I wonder what they have done differently (since I haven’t played in years). I did know that more Pokémon were added over the years, and it has spread over all of the Nintendo handhelds.

But somehow I found myself swiping my debit card and left with Pokémon Platinum and a Mudkip plushy (… I don’t know why).

On the flight back I decided to crack open my DS and start of Platinum; until the steward told me to turn it off (I’m still trying to figure out how my little DS will make a plane go crazy).

Well I can say the story line is still the same after all these years. You play an annexed 12 year old in a world where Tijuana cockfighting is 100% legal and you are fighting older folk for Boy Scout badges. And you still can’t walk behind buildings (despite the graphics update).

The only known storyline sounds like something out of a Michael Crichton or an Arthur C. Clark novel. The storyline involves a disturbance on a Mountain, when a portal to an alternate dimension is opened where normal physical laws do not apply. Then the Pokémon world becomes a scene from day after tomorrow where the climate starts to change (Ironically on my flight back we were watching An Inconvenient Truth).

I’m ok with it. After so many years without playing, it is an ok flash back to my childhood… until I realized how messed up it was.

After realizing the cockfighting scenario (FYI, I named my torchik little jerry ala Seinfeld), I noticed other screwed up stuff.

Where are the real animals in the Pokémon world? I noticed in one episode that Ash is eating a hamburger, so I’m assuming that they are slaughtering Taruos somewhere in that world. Are there restaurants call Kentucky Fried Pidgey? How many officer Jenny’s are there? Is there some inbreeding I’m not aware of?

Anyway… I’m off

Typing this while listening to my professor lecture on communism (and hopped up on Mtn Dew).

Aaron

To be honest, I have never played the early RE games. I've only started with RE4. I knew about the franchise when it came out but had no interest. I only got into it after the movies came out. I thought the movies were cool (and Milla Jovovich was hot!) but my friends have told me that the games were much better.
So after I played RE4 I wanted to get caught up with the storyline so I did research (via Wikipedia), and played again and again. I then reactivated an old eBay account and bought the older games, and the cube remakes.
When I found out that RE5 was coming out, as a new fan to the series, I was very interested in what was originally supposed to be done.
- Zombies were supposed to be similar to the ones from 28 days latter and RE4.
- Was going to have a scenario were if you did no take care of yourself, you would suffer from mirages, affecting your game play.
- A more intensive game play similar to black hawk down
Unfortunately; when the trailer was released, a Newsweek writer claimed the the idea of a white protagonist fighting African zombies was quasi-raciest. After that, multiple African American groups considered the game raciest, including the NAACP.
Now I'm not raciest, but lets look at this in a hypothetical standpoint. "If" you were dropped in Africa, and "If" you were surrounded by zombies, and "If" you had guns, what would you do? I wouldn't care If you are white black, Asian, Hispanic, or what have you. If you are a zombie and you are trying to eat me, I WILL SHOOT YOU!
I am only raciest to the undead.
The second it gets set in Africa, people begin to use the race card. Although in RE4, which had Hispanic zombie-esque people, no one complains.
When game magazines started to preview RE5. Many gave early praise. One that caught my eye was this years Eurogamer magazine. One writer, Dan Whitehead (yes... that is his name sadly) said that "It plays so blatantly into the old cliches of the dangerous 'dark continent' and the primitive lust of its inhabitants that you'd swear the game was written in the 1920s". How he came to see that I will never know.

Then the game is released.

I bought the game on the release date but could not play it due to me being out of town. When I returned I dedicated a day to playing it.
I had beat it in less then a day (playing non-stop) and played it again for the unlockables.

The aftermath

After reading reviews, many have praised it. The only review that set me off was when I opened up Entertainment Weekly and to my surprise they reviewed it (they gave it a B). Although they had compared Shiva, your female partner, to Elika from Price of Persia, they mention the race card. Now at first I assumed that the reviewers for Entertainment Weekly were in their 40's and were hipster fags (no offense). Jeff Jensen (the reviewer) actually shares my view on RE5.
"And while that point of reference accentuates the impressively rendered Third World squalor, it makes for uncomfortable moral ambiguity...for a few minutes, at least. I found myself asking: Is it okay to enjoy killing mobs of impoverished Africans? Then I remembered they were only zombies, and proceeded to slaughter with impunity."

My final grade.

I also have to give it a B. Felt a lot like RE4, but could still use some work. Co-Op works fine. but wish they didn't remove some of the stuff I mentioned before. And to end the grade, I agree with Yahtzee Croshaw's use of quick time events in games. I'm starting to hate it.

Oh well, live and let live (ironic for this game)

Writing this while hopped up on aspartame (Drinking too much TAB cola).

Aaron