I have nothing against people finding video game characters attractive. If you are going to kick alien/zombie/alien-zombie ass then it is better to have a hot female ass to look at while you do it. And while a spate of games recently have used sex to sell and not sold very well, i would argue that this was not the failure of sex, but rather the effectiveness of places like destructoid at spreading the news about how mediocre these games are.

Wet would be no better if the main character was a Quasimodo look-alike. Red alert 3 would not have sold more if all the eye candy was replaced by equally good, ugly actors. Tomb raider would have been no more meaningful if Laura was replaced by Nathan Drake.

It isn't just the pulpy, quick, dirty thrill games which are improved by attractive characters. Half life 2 would have been a lot less effective at getting us to connect with Alyx Vance had she not been so beautiful (in that Rashida Jones, I like a lot of milk in my hot coffee, kinda way). Sure, she has a fantastically crafted fun personality that you cant help but adore but... if she looked like one of the head crabs I wouldn’t have cared so much when (insert spoiler of your own choice here) happened.

To anyone who says this damages the image of games as a legitimate art form I offer the example of classical music, where it was realised long ago that hot chicks with nice assets were performing the same old music just as well AND they were nice to look at. People don’t go around bemoaning the lack of ugly musicians or Hollywood actresses.

So do not think for a second that I don’t care for the upcoming boyonetta game because I just don’t think beauty improves a game. I don’t care for it because all the associated advertising and blogging is about how boyonetta is so bloody beautiful, and if that is its one selling point then I would have expected something better than the chicken legged, pin headed, gangly thing with a stupid haircut excuse for a sex object.

The potential of a Call of Duty boycott raises two issues:

It’s CoDmod2! Don't even pretend an extra £10 is going to stop you when we will buy games that are nowhere near as good for full retail. They know this is true; they have done the market research. They know a lot of people clocked a solid week plus playing CoD4 online. £55 for 168 hours of entertainment is still a bargain and you know it.

The role of a publisher is to take the flak for anything that fans of a series don’t like. People blame activision/microsoft/EA for the price / rushing a game out so it isn’t good / holding back on content for DLC. I can’t help but think that one of the services that publishers provide is a 'bad guy' image to take the brunt of fans anger. Do you really think infinity ward is an innocent little helpless developer having more money forced upon them by a cruel publisher?

Activision are happy to get this awful reputation to defend their developers because it doesn’t impact on other games they publish. If the proposed boycott was to have any effect then it would have to be aimed at all "Activision Blizzard" titles and be combined with actions likely to reduce their sales to other people (negative reviews on Amazon being a good example, especially considering the amount of awful dross they dupe unsuspecting members of the public to buy).

I know I can’t resist CoD, but I can gladly purge myself of other Activision Blizzard titles. Here is a guide of superior substitutes for their games.

Don’t buy Tony Hawks, buy Skate.
Don’t buy Prototype, buy inFamous
Don’t buy guitar hero, buy a guitar
Don’t buy odd numbered CoDs, save that cash for the more expensive even numbered CoDs
Don’t buy Starcraft, buy Company of Heroes
Don’t buy Warcraft, buy heroine

I've always been bad at sniping in other games, halo in particular. Something about having sniper rifles which have barely a better range than the other guns and leave a smoke trail telling people exactly where you are combined with a bright red suit in a world where natural foliage seems few and far between. I hated doing it so much that I just couldn't learn enough to get better at it.

Then COD4 came and suddenly I had camouflage and I had a sniper that could kill people in one shot (I love my 50 cal. with stopping power) and I wasn't dressed in bright lumonous camo.



Camping

But then came the insults. I was a camper, I was a sniper and these things made me a noob. Killing lots of people and dieing not very much is what noobs do. The only thing that isn't being a noob is running around like a idiot with a sub-machine gun in a place overlooked by atleast 5 good sniping spots.

Yes, I left claymores to cover my flank and you ran into it again and again. That makes ME the stupid faggot. Yes, I stayed in the same place and kept sniping you again and again as you ran around a corner, despite the fact that the game tells you exactly where I was and how I killed you every time you die. That makes me the gay noob, as aparntly does:

Killing a person over and over again with the pistol. Seriously apparently people should learn to use their primary weapon.

Using the M16 assault rifle because killing people over and over again with the first unlocked gun is stupid.

Using the grenade launcher because sacrificing a perk slot and the ability to fire my gun makes me overpowered and using overpowered weapons is stupid, people need to use weak weapons which don't kill as much.

People need to stop complaining about how bad the guns that killed them are. Camping is a legitimate strategy.

I'm sure you have all seen the dumbed down version of this blog.

A letter to the US presidential candidates.

Here we have it in its unedited form, with all the very nescesary quotation marks and even more hyper acurate "facts":



I know that they all 'probably' assume they have better, much more 'important', urgent, timely, things to 'campaign' on, but I sure would like to get their 'individual' takes on the new 'video game' that one "company" is marketing to innocent little twelve year old orphans.

It's called "Mass Effect" and it allows its 'players' - universally male, spotty, four eyed, social outcast and virgins, no doubt - to engage in the most hardcore, filthy, two girls and one cup style sex acts ever conceived. One can custom design the shape, form, bodies, race, hair style, breast size and number, and penis length of the two girls they wish to "engage" and then watch in crystal clear, LCD, 54 inch screen, HD clarity as the video game "persons" viscously fuck in every position, form, format, multiple, gender-oriented possibility they can think of.


The only respite from hardcore sex the children forced to play this game get is the frequent elevator rides between cliched porn scenes.

The objections to such filth should be simple to understand. The game is a high definition sex simulator which has little substance (mass) but no doubt an irrevocable effect on the impressionable minds of the innocent little twelve year old orphans who this is marketed to.

Starting with the disgusting idea that one can "create" their own versions of what people look like, removing warts, moles, and bald spots while enhancing - shall we say - the extended features of the game's characters tends to objectify women, sex, and human relationships, or even hides a 50 year old pedophile as a young and attractive character in the game, so that they can have perverted sex with the kids who play this game, over the 'internet'. Right? We can all agree on this game should be banned and the makers hung?

Then there's the 'dishonesty' behind the game' title. "Mass Effect" sounds like a war game with a deadly virus called pn45-n that is being spread from a secret facility underneath a quiet rocky mountain town unless the GI-Joes are able to defeat the evil and deadly substance by killing the evil capitalist forces which have masterminded the plague, by viciously slaughtering them. By it's design, kids could ask for it, or for their parents' Best Buy Card to go purchase it with nary a raised eye-brow. Generic, non-descriptive, and relatively harmless. This game should be called, girl on alien on child on pedophile orgy rape with gay ass sex, and a cup. Even then I would complain that it was hiding some of the games darker sexual acts, which to even type about would put one on a sex offenders list.

No only does the game give the option of hardcore sex, but at many turns the 'innovative' talking system gives multiple options which all result in beastiality.


Yes, all of these result in sex with a chicken

It IS marketed for the X-Box 360, perhaps the most visually stimulating, vibrating, gaming system ever made. The software for such allows the blending of DVD video, component graphics, and the manipulation of actual pictures so that they move, and a box that engulfs the twelve year old �boy� playing it and then fucks him in the head (note, head fuck should be added to the list of possible sexual acts within the game as well)

Now if I have trouble with my son taking his James Bond 007 games a little too emotionally, imagine the powerful effect that hormones add to the mix when the player's own character is copulating like jack rabbits with super-models, actresses, porn stars, geriatrics, Alzheimer's patients, horses, worms and any 'thing' else they can spend the patience and time left after the game forces them to take up a crack habbit, to create, name, and "put into play."

I hear the libertarian Ron Paul's answer already, "Government has no business censoring freedom of expression." Figures, he's a libertarian and wants to fuck our children.

With it's "over the net" capabilities virtual orgasmic rape is just the push of a button away.