What were the last video games you played?

[Cubecubed]

Sadly, mine is not doing a midnight release.

[Der_Lex]

Tonight I have suddenly been reminded of the downsides of PC gaming. My crappy internet connection upstairs (PC is too far away from the wireless router, I really need to invest in Powerline soon) borked the Enhanced Edition predownload, leading to not only the upgrade not working as intended, but the entire game launcher becoming corrupted. Had to delete the game from my hard drive and am reinstalling now, after which I have to do the whole 10 gig download again and hope it works this time. Sigh.

[firedoom666]

Tonight I have suddenly been reminded of the downsides of PC gaming. My crappy internet connection upstairs (PC is too far away from the wireless router, I really need to invest in Powerline soon) borked the Enhanced Edition predownload, leading to not only the upgrade not working as intended, but the entire game launcher becoming corrupted. Had to delete the game from my hard drive and am reinstalling now, after which I have to do the whole 10 gig download again and hope it works this time. Sigh.

This is why I have a 35 foot Ethernet cable going across my house

[Lowlander2]

Alright, enough time has passed so I can talk about Skullgirls for a bit.

The graphics were very sharp. The vibrant art style isn't the most original thing out there but it looks good even in 1080p. The art itself is very madcap and absurdist mixed with a gothic feel. It feels like a mishmash of other works, as evidenced by some painful references and puns. The Dagonians from Little Innsmouth? Oh, please stop, my sides are hurting. There's something else to say about the artstyle, which I'll give a moment.

The fighting? Very MvC3 inspired, though it's heavier. Not weightier, heavier. There's a more focused ground game. The characters seem relatively balanced, though Pea**** and Parasoul seem too slow to be very viable. It has a very good set of tutorials to benefit all sorts of players, though the story mode is perhaps a bit too hard. The final boss is especially cheap, but it's a fighting game: what are you gonna do?

The story itself felt deliberately underdeveloped, leaving room for both interpretation and remediation (fanfiction, etc.) I'm of both minds on this. The story paints enough of a picture on all sides for each character for you to figure out what goes on within the stories themselves, but what a little more backstory would have done for the game, particularly with Filia's ending, which is beautifully bittersweet but I don't know why.

There are also so many terrible puns in this game that it gives the Dragon Quest series a run for its money. When one of the characters knocks out the cat character, she remarks "Curiosity and I have something in common." I kind of wanted to wreck my TV.

Then there's the sexism issue floating around. Truth be told, I may have been one of the first to bring this up. As soon as Valentine's concept art was revealed, I kind of made some noise about it. Is it as bad now as it was back then? Not entirely, but it's still there.

Most of the characters just have jiggle physics and skimpy-ish clothing and I just accepted those as tropes of the genre and art style, also keeping in mind that you don't really notice it during fights. But then we get to the aforementioned ninja nurse, Valentine, and Parasoul. One has boobs so big she could give the girls from Jersey Shore a run for their money and just shows them off in every move she does, the other just isn't wearing any pants and so you get a panty shot with each high kick she does.

I kind of feel insulted that Reverge could think I want this just because I am a man who plays fighting games. It's more derogatory to me than it is to women, really. I'm not usually an industry elitist, but we need to start moving away from this if we want to make social progress. Don't just ake the girls have big breats so my best friend's Tumblr feed can be filled with

Altogether good game. Looking forward to the DLC, including the move lists WHICH SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN THE GAME!

EDIT: Okay, that's a lot of text.

[ultimatespidey81]

yep and i didn't read a word of it haha.

mass effect 2. doing the insanity run that i put off for over a year. why the **** not, eh?

[Insane3]

Sexist depiction of women in video games is the norm. Even complex women characters are usually designed to be sexy so that little boys would care. Just look at the races in the Mass Effect universe. The all-male race (turians) (there are female turians but you just never get to see them) is much less sexualized than the all-woman race (asari) (although they're technically both gender). And that's coming from a game with interesting characters and complex interactions.

And, you know, it works. People care more for sexy characters. And culture has brought men to expect sexy women characters from mainstream video games and films.

[Runesmith]

Sexist depiction of women in video games is the norm. Even complex women characters are usually designed to be sexy so that little boys would care. Just look at the races in the Mass Effect universe. The all-male race (turians) (there are female turians but you just never get to see them) is much less sexualized than the all-woman race (asari) (although they're technically both gender). And that's coming from a game with interesting characters and complex interactions.

And, you know, it works. People care more for sexy characters. And culture has brought men to expect sexy women characters from mainstream video games and films.

And that's to say nothing of the overly sexualized male characters in Japanese RPGs, either. I honestly think the male characters in the Final Fantasy series dress sluttier than the female ones do.

[Lowlander2]

Maybe. I just don't think Valentine's boobs needed to be that big. The other ones were sexualised as well, but I was fine with those, except for Pantslesssoul.

[GreatJedi7]

Somehow managed to play Halo: Reach yesterday for the first time in like, 6 months. My disc is busted, so I'm surprised I even managed to get a splitscreen game started with my brother, let alone 45 minutes of gameplay.

[Cipher_Peon]

When it comes to the sexualization of female characters, I don't necessarily have a problem with it unless it starts making sexist remarks regarding women. Sexualization of both genders exists in every art form which isn't necessarily a bad thing as many regard the human body to be a work of art in of itself. Sure it would be nice to step away from this portrayal of women, but it needs to be in steps. Personally I would make it go take steps the opposite way. Instead of decreasing the sexualization of women in video games, I would make female characters more significant and more relatable and more human.