your favorite games of 2012 - Page 2

Well, I'll be darned. If you simply google "Far Cry 3 racism", you'll see that there sure is a lot of chatter about that.

Myself? Jesus Christ, Life is way too short to go around "looking" for racism in inanimate objects and video games. I remember seeing people complain that the Lord of the Rings trilogy was racist (the bad orcs were dark in color! Gasp!).

Give me a fu&^%kng break.

There's REAL racism out there. People that openly claim to hate others of a different race. People that perpetuate violence against others, simply because of race. Go spend your time (not you AVS guys, I'm talking about the whiners) fighting true, open, clear racism. Once you get rid of that, then you can spend your time railing against video games.

And that's my .02 cents on that.

The other view is that there's nothing "natural" about racism, so it has to be learned somewhere. That "somewhere" includes video games. Conversely, we might actually gain perspective on or learn something about (*gasp*) important things like racism through creative media.

Games can either be symptomatic of the world's ills (violence, misogyny, racism, oppression), or they can take a proactive role by giving us a new way of looking at the world's ills. But there's no third option there--especially as games become more and more engaged in visual realism, real history, real politics, and real people. Far Cry 3 isn't the smartest thing ever said about racism and violence in games, but at least it makes the effort to say something new and thoughtful and even funny. Most games simply don't bother, and treat gamers like a bunch of mindless consumers only interested in shooting people and zombies.

My two cents.

Back on topic: I'm now a good ways into Far Cry 3. After a few basic homemade tweaks, the game works. Really enjoying it now that I've re-introduced some challenge to the game.
Edited by confidenceman - 1/11/13 at 11:50am

I still haven't added my list of Favorite Games of 2012, but I'd have to add Assassin's Creed III.

I played some more of that last night, and I'm getting close to completing the final main storyline. There's still a ton to do though, and I look forward to continuing to play.

It has it's warts, but it's an extremely ambitious title, and I like it.

I definitely want to give AC3 another shot. But, man, did it really sour me in its first week. I'm sure they've fixed most of the big bugs by now, but it'll take a while to get that awful taste out of my mouth. Maybe a good summer game. I'll probably be in a better mood then.

Mass Effect 3 - 20 or so hours in single player and 560 and still going in multiplayer. Not sure why, but I love it.

Journey - Pretty awesome.

Dark Souls - It gets 2012 honors since it was released late in 2011. Played this for about 400 hours until Mass Effect 3 came out.

He spoke to Eurogamer about the controversy regarding the game's writing. Interesting read.

EDIT: Sorry, the Eurogamer piece is actually quoting heavily from an interview on The Penny Arcade Report.

- Jer
Edited by jhaines - 1/27/13 at 1:59pm