philosoraptor42

My last Metroid post with a whole selection of cool Metroid-related artwork I discovered can be found here.
I've been mainly finding this artwork on the Samus Aran and A Metroid Fanatic tumblr blogs.
(I also did a similar kind of post related to He-Man and the Masters of the Universe here.)


( More awesome images under the cut... )

*Mild/Moderate Trigger Warning* This discussion of misogyny and the damsel in distress trope may inevitably be triggering for some readers as it discusses power-imbalances and some violent or abusive scenarios. That said, there is no use of graphic descriptions nor any reference to sexual violence.

The post below is going to analyse some bigotry against Anita from Feminist Frequency. She has released the first of her "Tropes Vs Women" series about videogames now. Personally, I was unsure about some of the stuff about Starfox Adventures (since I cannot help but imagine that the character change in that game must be somewhat related to Microsoft buying Rare - since it would be harder for Nintendo to keep hold of a game not starring one of their copyrighted group of characters), but asides from that I was mainly reacting with "ah, I guess that's right".

Inevitably there's been some backlash. One of the videos criticising Anita (and undoubtedly NOT one of the best critiques she'll receive) comes from a Youtube user called Thunderf00t....



Now it's been a while since I've been made really angry by some bigoted ranting. I've reacted to some news articles, sure, but I've generally not been chasing down internet idiots. I've been a lot better off for it though.

The last idiot I really thought I needed to alert people to was Pat Condell. Condell was seemingly only known on the internet, but he seemed to have a wide following. So when his videos went from annoying and crass to all-out hate-mongering, I felt the need to expose precisely why people shouldn't support him. (He's still up to the same old tricks it seems. One of his latest videos claims that it's racist not to consider all Palestinians, every man, woman and child of them, to be evil terrorists. That's pretty typical rhetoric from him sadly.)



But the recent dodgy internet hatred doesn't seem to come from a single person. Instead it seems to be embodied by a large gang of mostly libertarian internet users who are strangely opposed to feminism and demand protection from criticism if they post offensive comments (on the grounds of 'free speech' apparently).

"Thunderf00t" seems to be a pretty big ringleader of this group. By this point Thunderf00t is pretty well known to be someone your average decent supporter of feminism will be upset by, but he attracts a lot of attention so I feel like he's probably as good a representative as any for this disgusting internet misogyny recently.

First of all some background...

Thunderf00t and Freethoughtblogs

Thunderf00t had a run-in with well known pro-feminism atheist blogger P.Z. Myers (who runs the blog Pharyngula) who is disinclined to accept misogyny, racism, homophobia, etc. on his comments threads. When Thunderf00t was offered space in Freethoughtblogs and decided to use it almost entirely to dismiss women's rights the other bloggers on Freethoughtblogs decided that he wasn't fitting in. He was alienating their female audience and conveying bigoted views with which Freethoughtblogs bloggers did not want to be connected.



Anita's "Tropes Vs Women" series

Anita used Kickstarter to get funding for her project to analyse the history of gaming and the portrayal of women within videogames. The comments at Kickstarter began to fill up with misogynistic comments from utter scumbags and the response by decent human beings across the internet was to donate huge amounts of money to her project. The misogynist comments had made it very clear to everyone just how much of an idol videogames were to these horrible individuals and just how sorely the world of videogames needed to be analysed from a feminist perspective.



Thunderf00t's video "Feminism Vs FACTS (RE Damsel in distress)" and how it completely misses the point of Anita's original video at Feminist Frequency, feminism as a whole, and plain old common sense.



I only came to watch Thunderf00t's poor attempt at a critique because I stumbled on someone showing one of his old videos "The Internet: Where Religions Come To Die". Not knowing it was from Thunderf00t I approached it with a pretty open mind. There were parts that were well-argued and other parts where it was more obviously labouring the point. I noticed that the video seemed to have a very "us and them" stance which appeared to represent the vlogger's genuine stance rather than being a rhetorical tool.

1- Double Dragon Neon

Thunderf00t's latest video begins by questioning Anita's research for her videogame critique. He argues that she is wrong to claim the damsel in distress of the game "Double Dragon Neon" is portrayed as weak, ineffective or ultimately incapable because the game finishes with her punching the villain in the crotch.



While this might seem like a reasonable argument to someone who had never watched the original video, already Thunderf00t is showing a clear failure to understand Anita's argument. Anita's concern with "Double Dragon Neon" mainly focusses on the opening which, as an update of an older game, rejigs the 8-bit classic by showing the damsel in distress character being punched in the gut and carried away in deeper colours, pristine 2D graphics with her cleavage clearly visable as she is punched and her knickers clearly visible as she is carried away. This update of the older classic begins straight away with an utterly demeaning image for women, right before introducing the two MALE playable characters.

The ending where she gets to help beat up the villain in the end is earned after the two male characters have spent the entire game trying to save her, while she sits and waits for them. There's even a part of the game where the two playable MALE characters (since Marian herself is NOT a playable character) can fight for her affection, while she cheers them on in the background. This all serves to back up the idea of women as objects the male characters compete for. Yes, even if the unplayable female character gets to help deliver the finishing blow at the last minute, she's still been completely helpless for the whole game and used as a woman-shaped trophy by the game designers.

( Read more... )


Thunderf00t simply doesn't understand the topic he is trying to discuss and yet there are internet misogynists rallying around his video which now has over 10,000 likes. Meanwhile Anita has had no choice but to disable ratings and comments because of an over-abundance of misogynistic trolls. Check out her excellent analysis of the Damsel In Distress trope in videogames below:



(video link)

rhoda_rants decided to do this new meme so I guess I ought to follow it. If you are interested in sharing your current desktop image, the rules are pretty simple:
1.) Anyone who looks at this entry has to post this meme and their current wallpaper. (So yeah, that's mandatory right?)
2.) Explain in five sentences or less why you're using that wallpaper!
3.) Don't change your wallpaper before doing this! (Coz that's cheating!)



I'm a big fan of the Metroid Prime series. "Metroid Prime Trilogy" is like my favourite game of all time. I also love the colour effect on this pic. It's just generally really cool. There's a tumblr blog I follow especially to find new awesome Metroid pics.

(My desktop pic originated here)

Also.... ever wondered who would win out of Samus Aran and Boba Fett in a DEATH BATTLE?


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New awesome Cracked video. YAY!


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Also anyone not following the new tv series from the freddiew youtube channel "Video Game High School". It's utterly crazy and it just gets better and better. (Now up to episode 7 btw.) :D


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A long while back the_gel made this loltastic video of him playing "Kinect Joy Ride" without moving his arms. (He comes third. Check it out here.) So when GEL decides to do a video looking into the new Kinect Star Wars game, what's he going to find when he tries out Pod Racing?

(Video link)

4:50 - You know what time it is!
7.10 - Race finally begins



(via the-gel)

Update: Turns out in the second video that the game is automatically set to auto-steer. Though I still think it's pretty strange that a Kinect game would have the "you are not able to lose" mode as the default setting.

"The Power Is Mine, Bitches!"


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In one of the games being released for Kinect, the game auto-steers so much that the car drives itself. I would not have believed this if I hadn't seen it.

Lol@one of the youtube comments:
"Holy f*** Kinect can read minds now?"

(Via the_gel )

Picture on left chosen because it is somewhat emo. Picture on right chosen because it looks cool.

Oh dear, and I'd been really looking forward to this one. I've been alerted to a rather big issue with the new Metroid game ("Metroid: Other M"). Now it has to be said that I'd been warned to expect a certain amount of objectification because of the group working on it (Team Ninja), but this I wasn't prepared for.

The real cause for concern is this cut-scene (pointed out on the_gel  's blog) where Samus not only turns to jelly at the thought of facing a foe, Ridley, whom she has dealt with twice already (and another three times if you count the Metroid Prime games, which it seems that they probably aren't). She gets an attack of nerves so bad that she has to be saved, by a man. And not only that, but the man who saves her is black and expendable! *facepalm*:




To quickly explain the title of this post, it's one of the cons in the review I found. At the beginning of each Metroid game Samus normally loses a few abilities at the beginning of the game, often due to a malfunction. She then progresses through the game by gradually earning those abilities back (along with some extra ones). In this new game, she has a professional relationship with an older man called Adam who used to be her boss. Now that he's running the team she randomly chooses not to use her abilities until Adam gives her the order to do so. The suggestion here is that this is somewhat BDSM-like. If you don't know who Montana Fishburne is, she's Lawrence Fishburne's daughter and she's been having arguments with her daddy recently over her decision to go into porn (allowing Filmdrunk to get more than a few cheap laughs).

So here's the review from G4TV which caught my eye:

Metroid: Other M Review
By Abbie Heppe - Posted Aug 27, 2010

The Pros

* Secondary plotline is interesting, engaging
* Graphics are very pretty

The Cons

* Samus has more daddy issues than Montana Fishburne
* Control layout is awkward and interrupts combat
* All the game elements feel disjointed and not fully developed

As the 11th game in the series, Other M is a bizarre collaboration between the Metroid series co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto and Team Ninja of Ninja Gaiden fame. Indeed, “odd pairings” becomes the common thread throughout the game and its clashing dualities extend to the storyline, control scheme and onscreen action.

Time-wise, Other M is tucked in between fan-favorite Super Metroid and the critically beloved Metroid Fusion -- the first game that showed a hint of Samus's personal history and the introduction of Adam Malkovich, a core character in its newest iteration.

This makes Other M the second-to-last game sequentially, as the bulk of Metroid games have wedged themselves further and further into the early years of Samus Aran’s story. Ironically, Other M feels like a prequel to the franchise while attempting to be the culmination of everything Metroid has been and become.


But I’m a Bounty Hunter

In the world of Other M, Samus stumbles upon her old Galactic Federation squad mates while answering a distress call on a seemingly abandoned vessel. Among the people she encounters is her former captain, Adam Malkovich. In the most contrived manner possible, Samus loses her special abilities. How? She opts not to use them. Why? She wants to show Adam she can follow orders.

Yes, that’s right. The woman who in the first five minutes of the game gives the squad access to the ship by using her missiles is restricted from using her abilities -- some which could open a path or save her life in the future -- until a bland male character dictates it to her. She does this because she likes him, but only as a friend.

No matter what way you rationalize this mechanic, when you're 10 minutes into the lava sector and you can't use your Varia Suit yet, you will understand how painfully stupid this plot device is.
( Read more... )

I had previously considered that making Samus more "feminine" might cause problems (and the whole zero-suit thing was already causing issues tbh), but it sounds like they could have done a lot better than this.

The video review here:



Discussion about the issues here:

I presume everyone by now has heard about Roger Ebert's restatement of his position that "Video Games Can Never Be Art".

Ebert originally stated that videogames could not be art for the following reasons:

They tend to involve (1) point and shoot in many variations and plotlines, (2) treasure or scavenger hunts, as in "Myst," and (3) player control of the outcome. I don't think these attributes have much to do with art; they have more in common with sports.

Before we go on, it's worth noting that the artistic elements within videogames are not per se enough to qualify them as art in the sense Ebert is going for. As he puts it, they might be art, but they are not "high art":

Anything can be art. Even a can of Campbell's soup. What I should have said is that games could not be high art, as I understand it.

It's at this stage where I find myself arguing whether even movies meet this high standard. For what reason might we say that "Schindler's List" is art in the way that a poem by Tom Gunn or a painting by Turner is art? In fact, if novels are art, but player control of the outcome counts against this, are we to imagine that a "choose your own adventure" story could never be art and doesn't such a judgement sound rather pretentious? One of the guys from Penny Arcade had this to say:

There was the newspaper headline back in 1959 with regards to Jackson Pollock's work that said "This is not art — it's a joke in bad taste." It's a funny line but time has proven it was also completely wrong. Ebert has thrown his hat in with the rest of the short sighted critics who would rather debate what is or isn't art, rather than simply enjoy the work of artists.

( Read more... )

The final word I'll leave you with comes from the same Escapist article as was quoted above:

"Videogames, yes," I answer. "I've been doing it over 20 years now." Really without any effort at all, I launch into a little love manifesto of sorts, talking about how much I enjoy being a game designer, how wonderful it is to make games, all kinds of games. I even tell them about the incredibly wonderful modding experience I had with my 7-year-old daughter. "I am teaching her to play Risk," I tell them. "And when I told her she couldn't own the oceans, she said, 'But, Mommy, you're a game designer. You can change the rules!'" We did, and it made the game a whole lot different, and the best part about it was that we made our first mod together. It was a wonderful, geeky moment that perhaps only another game designer parent can appreciate.

Now personally I think that's really sweet, and perhaps it's not so different from teaching your child to paint. :)

Ok, basically I wrote this in the comments of the Nintendo Wii LJ group. Since my comments were so well received and since I spent so much time on them and (most importantly) since I haven't written anything in my blog for so long, I'm posting it all here:

So....... here's a summary of the games I have and what I think of them. It should give a pretty simple idea of which ones are great, which ones are ok, and which ones require a bit of thought.

Personal Favourites
Okay, these first seven games are my personal favourites
Zelda: Twilight Princess
Super Mario Galaxy
Trauma Centre: Second Opinion
All of these games will take a long time, involve plenty of variety and are great fun from beginning to end. If you don't already own them I'm surprised.

Yes, that's right, I include Trauma Centre in that list. It's actually one of the best games for the Wii. It's imaginative, exciting, challenging, makes good use of the Wii controls, and also the music is pretty catchy. If you haven't played it either find someone who's got it or just buy it. You won't regret it.

Excite Truck
Great fun from beginning to end. Perfect controls. You'll probably notice that it is hideously underrated. (I'm hoping that Mario Kart works as well as this did.) I only leave it out of the earlier three because, being a driving game, it doesn't have the variety those games did. Nevertheless, what with being able to choose what music to drive to while you smash through other trucks, navigate through trees at high speed, and rocket-boost your truck over ramps and go soaring through the air, all go to make this a damn good choice.

Rayman Raving Rabbids
A true personal favourite (which unfortunately means that many people really don't understand why I love this game so much). I loved this from beginning to end, and still enjoy playing the dance game a lot. While it can be good to play in multiplayer, I found it great fun on my own.

Link's Crossbow Training - WARNING - VERY SHORT
Yes, this game really won't take you very long, but is actually probably the most fun of all the shooting games I've played. (It also benefits from being significantly cheaper, despite containing the Wii Zapper which, unfortunately, you might as well do without.) As usual, this is another Nintendo game which has that 'certain something' to it which just makes it 'work'. While it's short, it's gaming genius from start to finish.

Resident Evil 4: Wii Edititon
Quite simply the best version of the game you'll find. I only put it this far down the list because you've probably played it already. Nevertheless, it works really well with the Wii controls and I absolutely love it.

Update: Guitar Hero III: Legends Of Rock
Absolutely amazing. Not just a game, but an experience. The easy mode won't take you very long, but don't worry as you won't be satisfied until you've completed it on Medium. That'll take you a bit longer and then the addiction shifts to completing it on Hard mode. Basically this game becomes an obsession and it's fortunate that it inspires so much passion as it costs a bloody fortune!

Pretty cool games
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
There are some very nice moments in this game, so it feels really mean of me to put it in the secondary category like this. However, in the end I felt a little underwhelmed. When I finished the game it just felt like something was missing. (This may be partly because I'm such a huge fan of the previous two games.) Another problem was I felt a bit too guided sometimes. Metroid games have always been about a lone bounty hunter doing their own thing not a special agent working for a boss. So, when you get contacted by some soldier saying 'come this way now' and get told you have been given 'objectives', you can sometimes feel a little irritated. (I'm actually being pretty picky here, but if I don't explain my issues with the game most people would wonder why this isn't amongst my personal favourites.)

Zack and Wiki (SHORT? Haven't finished it yet, so not sure.)
I actually love this game, but now I'm getting VERY stuck and I'm spending far too much time looking at FAQs. (That could just mean that I suck). Also I think I'm coming to the end of the game which means that the game isn't really terribly long. Nevertheless, the game is genius in so many ways. The game consists in a series of point and click puzzle games with a limited number of items to use. (The problem with this later level is that it is much longer and there are more items to keep track of. Nevertheless, the FAQ said that it was the hardest level in the game so I guess that explains it.)
Update: Yes, it is kinda short and the huge penultimate level is hugely irritating. There are some extra quests after the game is finished to find some extra bits of treasure but, to be honest, this extra section isn't that appealing. I still think the game is fantastic, but it is a little on the short side.

Ghost Squad WARNING: SHORT (SORT OF)
Not the best graphics, but a great shooting game nonetheless. A perfect port of a Sega arcade game. The rather odd way the game works means that it only has three levels, but adds more and more little sections to those levels the higher a level you get. While it might sound a bit dodgy it actually works very well.

Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles
Rather unforgiving in one player, but in two player the game is enormous fun. The menus feel rather unpolished, but the quality of the game cannot be denied.

Super Paper Mario
I've actually traded this in now. It's very text heavy and the later levels seem to run low on inspiration. However, that's by comparison to the earlier levels which are absolute genius. For the most part you'll find that the huge amount of text is nevertheless funny and entertaining even if it does take forever to scroll through. The game is absolutely fantastic for the first three quarters, but it becomes less fun after that, so when you reach the end you won't want to play through a second time. If you can borrow it from a friend, definitely do so.

Kororinpa WARNING: TOO SHORT!
This game is brilliant. I absolutely loved it. It involves rolling a ball around, but it's just done so, so well. However, length-wise it seems to rely on you wanting to play the whole thing all over again in 'mirror-mode' and unfortunately, unlike with Excite Truck, the levels don't feel particularly different when played backwards. As such, if you find yourself playing this game constantly (as I did) this won't last longer than a week. It's a real shame.

Don't touch this!
Marvel Ultimate Alliance
Starts off fun, then just gets boring. Slash at monsters, slash at more monsters, deal with naff puzzle, more slashing at monsters, a bad guy taunts us, then we kill them. Seriously, you have to a complete superhero obsessive to find any of this fun in the long term. It started off being pretty entertaining, but I couldn't keep going with it.

Mario Strikers Charged
Whether you win a game or not is pretty much random. When trying to win a cup in single player you have a semi-final to go through. No matter how well you've been doing prior to the semi-final, if you lose the semi-final you lose the cup (no retry options). The Wii remote controls feel tagged on. Just don't bother.

Call Of Duty 3
Oh, Jesus F**king Christ, the motions don't work, sometimes you find yourself stuck spinning in circles because of the cursor controls. Did I mention that the motion-controls don't work. And, oh dear me, the hand to hand fights are so ridiculously unforgiving, goodness knows what kind of motions you are meant to be performing, and it's a matter of luck whether you win or lose. Must be the worst Wii game I have ever played. Honestly, don't bother with it.