Some kind of confirmation of what I always thought August 25, 2007
Posted by Sharny in : Politics, World , add a commentI’ve always argued that one of the best ways for a government to control their people is through fear. It seems to be a very tried and tested method for rallying the people against something, whether its Hitler’s Germany joining against those “evil” Jews or the US and the so-called “war on terror”.
A recent study may shed some light on why it works so well and particularly confirms what I always feared. The link has more detail on the study but it essentially pac-man rigged up to a shock machine and presumably they study brain waves etc. It would appear that the closer and more imminent the danger is then the less free will you have, from the article: “The closer a threat gets the more impulsive your response will be,” he said. “In effect, the less free will you will have.”
That is quite a dangerous thought really, perhaps it goes to explain why the 45 minute WMDs threat from Iraq was such an effective way of luring us into war and of course why everyone is so irrationally afraid of terrorists and all these imminent attacks. I think this has proved to be a very effective way for governments (particularly George Bush) to get support for doing small and quite useless things whilst ignoring actual big issues.
It seems that now America is catching up with their free thought, as Bush’s approval rating seems to have plummeted people are finally catching up with how useless he really is. Still, it doesn’t stop Fox from trying, I suppose if they can convince everyone to be afraid of the horrifically imminent attack from Iran’s then Bush may just be able to win back some zombies.
All this leaves me wondering, what’s to stop all the other countries of the world being afraid of imminent attack from Bush’s weapons of mass destruction?
My All Time Top Games part 1 August 20, 2007
Posted by Sharny in : Entertainment, Fun, Gaming, Life , add a commentI kinda wanted to make a list of my all time top games, just to think about how much time I have spent playing different games and in that sense how good they are because quite frankly all I really play now is World of Warcraft but it doesn’t make the games I’ve played in the past bad and they still deserve a good mention.
I’m gonna go down in (to my best recollection) amount of time played, starting with the most. It’s going to be a 2 part post, the first part doing 1-5 and the next finishing it off, hopefully with 6-10.
1. Runescape
Ahh, runescape, my first taste of that fickle genre, the MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, but I’m sure you already know that). This comes right at the top because I played this game pretty much every day for over 2 years. Runescape was really more of a job than a game because it didn’t matter what you wanted in the game, it was all going to take a lot of work. You want that cool barrows armour? You’re gonna have to work. You want to be level 100? That’s a good 100 hours of grind right there. The only real merit is that some of this work didn’t require much attention, fishing for example was just waiting (quite realistic really…) and occasionally moving spots or going to the bank when you were full. What excitement.
The only really thing that kept it going so long was the pking (that’s player versus player by the way). Really, in itself, it wasn’t that exciting. I mean, most combat on these things does boil down to attacking and then waiting as numbers appear on you and your opponent but with others there’s usually some hardcore mashing of a few keys and running around in circles. With runescape all the real skill came down to timing of when to eat, which also relied on a nice net connection to make sure your timing didn’t go to waste.
The big thing about PKing was the revolutionary idea that when the enemy died you actually got to take the things they were holding and wearing. Unlike most MMORPGs, in runescape PvP was a big gamble, essentially a balance between the best equipment and what you could afford to lose. The possibility of reward and fame from pking was what kept it alive but really I should have quit much sooner. I was never that good at it really and it turns out I’m actually quite reasonable at WoW PvP which, despite having mediocre rewards, is actually a lot of fun.
2. Battlefield 2142
The latest in the battlefield series, it’s a bit of a difficult in terms of placing. I must have played it every day for a good few months before it finally got boring. It’s definitely a game worth playing and as with most of the games on this list it’s the multiplayer that really keeps it going. Gaining ranks and unlocks through the online play was a lot of fun and as with many of the best games it had those difficult to achieve unlocks that really keep you going. Unfortunately now its drifted away and I’m not interested in it any more but I will buy the next battlefield game, providing it is on PC, as BF2142 has provided me with a lot of fun.
Here’s where things get a bit difficult to classify as its really difficult to know how much time I spent playing these games, I’m going to try and put them into the best order I can though.
3.World of Warcraft
Yep, the beast of the MMORPG world. Whilst playing runescape I heavily criticised WoW so to anyone who read some of my forum posts about it back in the day would probably be tempted (and rightly so) to call me a hypocrite for playing it. It just turns out its much more fun than I realised it would be, both the PvP and PvE is a lot of fun. I’m particularly enjoying the concepts of different classes playing different roles in a group which is something that didn’t really exist in Runescape although it of course plays a big part in most MMORPGs.
I imagine I’ll be playing WoW for about another year, or until I get bored. I doubt I will carry on after going to university. I haven’t found it as addictive as runescape once was but its good fun and I have vowed to make sure not to play it beyond the point of having fun because that would be making the runescape mistake again.
4. Age of Empires 1 & 2
The original age of empires was first real experience of PC gaming and one of my early gaming experiences entirely. I’m not sure what it was that made it so great but it was just a brilliant. At first I could only play for very limited periods of time which kept it very fresh and left me longing to play more. When I finally had a computer of my own I quickly got AoE2 and played that for a while, after I finally got online with it that extended the game a bit longer but it eventually just faded away. Even though its not a series I ever play any more it is the sole reason that I grew to love the real time strategy genre, which brings me nicely to the next game.
5. Starcraft
It’s difficult to know where to place this gem, so I used a bit of chronology here. I was first introduced to this game by a friend who had 2 macs in his house both hooked up for LAN games. He, actually owning the game, tended to beat everyone who faced him at it but when the time came I bought my own copy thanks to those versus matches.
Really, the attraction of starcraft wasn’t in the single player game, which I found too hard, what was really great about it and remains so to this day is Blizzard’s Battle.net. What with the Starcraft editor being changed lots of great custom maps appeared and I spent many, many hours playing things like Simpsons massacre and sunken/tower/stargate/whatever defence. That’s what really kept it going as a great game and still keeps people playing today. Unfortunately, I can never seem to get onto battle.net any more, I do go on starcraft occasionally though as it is such a great game
I’m going to continue this post another day, with hopefully the 6-10 of my all time top games.
