Blog entries from The Defenestrator

You've probably already read this. Just about anyone who follows gaming news sites has read and developed an opinion about ex-Epic design director and video game gadfly Cliff Bleszinski's Tumblr post about micro-transactions. Some sites, like Kotaku, printed the article without comment, which reads like a public co-sign. Other places, like Destructoid, wrote a polite but assertive...

I'm not sure if this really needs to be said but it couldn't hurt to leave it here as a reminder. I understand the instinct to get angry or depressed when it comes to stuff like Mass Effect 3 or other video game controversies. It's cathartic to rage or cry or whatever your initial reaction is but you need to be careful when it comes to how you present those feelings to the rest of the world....

As usual, I picked a ridiculously large subject and wrote a ridiculously long post about it, so you'll have to go to my actual blog for the entire thing: http://electricdragon80k.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-problem-with-silent-hill.html Contains light spoilers for Silent Hill 2 and heavy spoilers for Silent Hill: Homecoming and Silent Hill: Downpour! Last month, I was lucky enough to attend the...

New blog is up! I'm writing about Gearbox's newest lady oriented PR snafu and the gaming press' typically facepalm-y response. Fun is had at Colin Moriarty's expense. Here's a teaser: Working up to the mid-September release of Borderlands 2, Gearbox Software has been in full on PR blitz mode. It has all the earmarks of a smash hit. The original was a fast, funny and addicting mix of first...

Okay, so I deleted my initial review of the Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut. Honestly, it hadn't been sitting well with me since I posted it. It was cathartic at the time but, in retrospect, it wasn't fair to the things BioWare got right and only harped on them for the things they got wrong. In my defense, I wrote it after being awake for about 30 hours non-stop... which isn't helpful for anything...

I'm not a loudly political or religious person. I have my thoughts and opinions (you can figure out where I land on things pretty easily) but I largely keep them to myself. I'm also not very confrontational. I always found it easier to just walk away than fight every stupid battle with everyone else's fevered egos and rampant insecurities. Unless I'm in some kind of physical danger, I'd rather...

It's gotten very hard to find intelligent conversation about this subject outside of this message board (and occasionally the Facebook page). Most gaming news sites found it easier to trash anyone up in arms about the ending then to diagnose WHY they were pissed. It began and ended with "whiny, entitled fanboys" and the real-world mechanics of changing the ending, not the actual content of it....

Read the article about us in the new issue of Game Informer. Pretty typical stuff. Nothing we haven't heard before. Still, it made me want to facepalm. Their views as a whole have evolved a bit since the first week of coverage but they're still finding new and interesting ways of condescending to and marginalizing us. The most glaring this time was the false equivalency between us and the people...

My epic long-windedness continues: Part 2: Now would be a good time to get a sandwich or a drink. Maybe take a nap. My reaction to the ending was like everyone else I know. My best friend and I both took a few vacation days so we could dive right into Mass Effect 3 without delay. We had done the same thing with Mass Effect 2. We ended up beating the game within twenty minutes of each other....

I noticed this when I first started scrolling through the Demand A Better Ending... Facebook page and again when I started posting here at Hold The Line: the myth about the angry fanboy just got shattered. Part of the problem with the way gaming journalists presented #Retake to their audiences was how they portrayed it. "Oh, it's just the fanboys again. God, they'll get angry over anything......

Hi! This is a re-post from my blog: http://electricdragon80k.blogspot.com It was the result of an entire Saturday, from about 1 PM to 5 AM, with an edit here or there after the fact. It's long enough that I have to break it up over two different blog posts. (I definitely need to work on my sense of brevity.) Still, I think I avoided blind hate or name-calling, so it's got that going for it. Hope...