EDIT: Earlier photos replaced with clearer, better-lit pics. Ask and ye shall receive.

Recently I came into possession of a certain action figure that a co-worker gave to me from a successful session of dumpster-diving. I don't know which office in the building it came from, but it must've been a damn cool place to work if it had this beauty:




Yes, that is the giant robot Raiden from Virtual On. Yes, that is a Sega Saturn on it's back. Yes, it's awesome.

But I was seriously wondering...could this figure be worth something? I figured I'd ask the community here if it is. Any Tomopoppers wanna take a crack at how much something like this could be worth?

Hey there Dtoiders,

First off I just want to say that I picked up Tom Clancy's HAWX recently and it is awesome. Yes, I know it's not a flight sim, but for me, that's a good thing. Like Yahtzee said in his Zero Punctuation review of Saints Row 2, realism isn't always a good thing. If a game can be made more fun by sacrificing realism, then that's fine by me. Now, I know that lots of people like more realistic flight simulators, and if you like that sort of thing, more power to you, but what HAWX does is truly bring the fighter pilot movie experience into your living room (or studio apartment in my case). The myth is infinitely more fun than the real thing.

Which brings me to my next subject - that of Tom Clancy games in general. I know, after I posted about how much I hate American foreign policy and the culture that supports it in such posts in my blog like "This will possibly be my angriest post ever," I know what you're going to say: how can I stand to play Tom Clancy games?

Well, here's the thing: I have this weird sort of dichotomy with them. I've never read any of Tom Clancy's books, but the games I've come to enjoy a lot. And in real life, I am anti-war and pretty much a pacifist, plus, my political views lean pretty left of the dial (as if you haven't figured that out already). But yet, in spite of that, I like playing the Tom Clancy games. I know that sounds weird, but here's how I see it - just because I play Tom Clancy games doesn't mean I endorse their political content. I also recognize that making war a game is a very, very ancient concept - war as a game has been around since the days of chess and go. So I don't think I'm being a hypocrite by being a Tom Clancy war game player who's against the real thing.

Plus, the storylines of the Tom Clancy games tend to be pretty apolitical. They're more akin to the storylines of games like Call of Duty 4, which is both a good and a bad thing, I realize. By being apolitical they acquire the good and bad points of neutrality and, to some extent, apathy - by being neutral in storyline they can appeal to a broader audience. But neutrality isn't always the right thing to do - if there is clearly moral wrongs being done, it's a necessity, in my opinion, to speak out against them. Especially when you're covering such topics as war and military operations; the Tom Clancy games can be considered guilty of such things as endorsing the militarization of American culture and drumming up support for recruitment by making warfare look cool.

It's important in cases like this to educate gamers that games like those with the Tom Clancy stamp are not accurate portrayals of the real thing. The real thing is long, messy, and constantly shuffles between boring and hellish. There's nothing cool about it. It's also important to note here that while games like this can be seen as endorsing American wars (and perhaps may be construed as propaganda), that our enemy here is not the game but the bomb. Again, war as a game is a very ancient concept, and yes, it's fun, but it's better to educate everyone about how video games and war really compare, and thus have them make their own decisions about such topics (such as if they want to play or not play them), than to blanketly focus on yoinking games like the Tom Clancy series off shelves.

As usual, post your own thoughts!

Apparently I was a bit late coming to Dtoid's GOTY party because I only found out just now, reading a c-blog, that Left 4 Dead won Dtoid's GOTY Award.

To which I say: hell fucking yeah! A friend lent the game to me a few days before Xmas (I do not own my own copy...yet) and I have to say it does deserve Dtoid's top honors, in spades. I probably can't really say anything about it that hasn't been said already, but...damn. The game actually makes multiplayer FUN. Which says a lot, considering how I'm not a diehard multiplayer person. (I do play multiplayer occasionally, but I played more L4D multiplayer in these last few days than I have played some titles all year.)

Well, I guess I could say one thing about L4D that hasn't been said yet. And that statement is: what makes L4D fun is the people. It's not just the gameplay - the people who regularly populate L4D really make the game fun for me. With the exception of a few assholes I've encountered (which are inevitable in any multiplayer game, really - it's the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory) almost all the players I've encountered in L4D have been nice, lively, reasonably intelligent, accomodating to newbies like myself, and generally great people to play a game with.

Maybe it's just the Christmas Spirit(TM) infecting these players like the zombie virus, but it's something that's been on my mind. Why are the players of L4D so much nicer and more decent human beings than players of other multiplayer games? What is it about L4D that makes players nicer to each other, or at least attract the sort of player who doesn't feel compelled to fill the airwaves with racist, homophobic banter? (And I'm playing the Xbox 360 version, folks.) I'm not sure what's going on here. Is it the game itself? Is it the market it's attracting?

What do you folks think is going on here? Am I just lucky? Post what you think is happening in the comments. In the meantime, have a happy holiday and stay uninfected!

As you folks who have seen a few posts of my blog (all three of you) may have figured out by now, I'm a pretty musically inclined person, especially when my two interests of music and video games intersect in some way. There are some games whose soundtracks I absolutely adore, and one recent example is Persona 4. The opening theme song of that game is catchy enough to qualify as a pandemic-level infectious disease. Likewise, the battle music, while good, is hampered by one flaw - there's only one track's worth of battle music, only varied slightly when fighting big bad guys or bosses.

Now, I understand the value of having music identified with a particular game event - note the victory music of the Final Fantasy games and how well that's been ingrained into our gamer minds. But one way to enhance the replayability of a game is to vary the music from time to time. And that got me to thinking about the following question: if you just succeeded in accomplishing a Herculean task in a video game, what would your music sound like?

Now, this may sound weird, but I think the track "Forever and Always" by Bullet for My Valentine would be good victory music for me. The stadium-filling, epic-sounding riffs coupled with the slow and thick drumming and the melodic vocals just conjure up in me images of having rescued the girl by slaying about three armies' worth of video game bad guys, having blown the head off of the last boss with the only bullet left in your arsenal. Weird association, I know, but that's just me. So, if you had to pick victory music for yourself, what would you pick?

Hey there Dtoiders,

Boy, it's been a while since I've updated my Dtoid Cblog. I'll try to update this thing more often as I've been more motivated lately. I've got some gaming-related shenanigans I can relate to you through here, and I figured I can start with this one simple thing: a soundtrack for you Rhapsody users out there. A soundtrack to what, you say? To the seminal game series Wipeout.

Wipeout has always been one of my fave game series, and for good reason. One particular reason has been the awesome electronica soundtrack, full of both original work and tracks from the best and the brightest in the electronica music scene. So for those of you who use the online music service Rhapsody, I've compiled this playlist of tracks I could find from there that were in a Wipeout game. I know it's not much compared to the entire series catalog, but it's less effort you have to exert to find the tracks on Rhapsody. Non-Rhapsody members can listen to the first 25 tracks for free before having to pay for anything else, though you still have to sign up. Enjoy!

Wipeout Series Soundtrack

Oh, and don't forget to read my review of the latest entry in the series, Wipeout HD over at the Escapist.

Edit: Fixed the post so the links actually work.

Went to see Hatebreed tonight. And while at the show I also paid for a bracelet which allowed me to attend the meet-and-greet afterwards. So I got to meet the band, and have them sign something.

AND GUESS WHAT I MADE THEM SIGN.



Hatebreed has a song (which they played that night) called As Diehard as They Come. So if meeting Hatebreed makes me diehard...and I'm a hardcore gamer...then that makes me...

DIEHARDCORE.