BREAKING NEWS.

In light of recent events, I don't think it is an overstatement to say that this could be the single most important piece of news to ever make-way on to the front page of this prestigious website.*

Obama has issued a statement concerning the matter, and I think that it is imperative that we all take a moment to just consider the sheer gravity of the situation.....

Lebron James' free agency.

That's right. As I was perusing a few different news websites, I found that on one in particular, the headline story was about what President Obama had to say concerning Lebron's potential Free-agency.

In what world do we live in, where not only does the President have time to issue official statements concerning a basketball player's maybe free-agency, but where that is THE TOP NEWS STORY OF THE DAY.

I mean really? Is there really nothing better going on in the world?** Surely there is something more important for the leader of the free world to do than sit around talking to sports reporters about random hypotheticals about sports figures?

When did the "great minds" of the day switch from discussing philosophy and politics, to celebrities and athletes?

President Obama has a proverbial Smörgåsbord


of political issues going on in the homeland right now. I can't comprehend how he has so much time to kick his feet up an shoot the bull. No doubt some of you will say every president has embraced this to some extent, but none on such a public, and extensive platform.

I just hope Mr. President is as skilled at selecting allies as he is at determining the integrity of a sports team.***

- Blue Rose

*Don't even think about it!
** Surely we can at least run another article about Lady Gaga being a hermaphrodite; that just seems like an endless well of news gold.
*** That's right, I said it!!!

The Perfect Video Game - Exemplification Through "Advent Rising"

The Perfect Video Game

- Exemplification Through "Advent Rising" -
By: Blue Rose
Now, I understand that I am probably committing every fallacy in the book on this one, but I can't help but be obsessed with this game.

When Reach and I's local BlockBuster was closing down, He and I decided to head down and peruse their inventory to see if there was anything we wanted to pick up. As I was glancing through the "Transporter" series, Reach called me over. "Rose," he says (Well not literally, but you're not gonna trick me into posting my real name :P) "you HAVE to get this." I took the game from his hand. Little did I know, I was holding the Holy Grail.

I was skeptical at first. The cover art was pretty bland, and the price was only $5 (to put that in perspective, that's 1/4 the price of Barbie Horse Adventure at Gamestop). It took some convincing, but eventually Reach talked me into buying the game on the grounds that if I, "Didn't absolutely love it", he would eat the cost.

Well, I went home and plugged in the 'ol Xbox and was immediately swept away. Even the opening credits was one of the more immersive experiences I've ever had. For the opening credits scene, you pilot a space ship into a massive space station. It sounds simple at first, but it was absolutely beautiful. Entranced by the amazing artwork, I didn't even notice that I had been sitting there for 15 minutes of credits.

Once you gain control of your character, you are thrown into a compelling plot that sneakily works in a tutorial.

The controls are mapped perfectly, and are just as much a part of the immersion as the story it self.

---- Mild Spoilers ----

Starting the game, you are a space marine named Gideon Wyeth. You begin combat using dual-wielded firearms, but slowly learn psychic abilities. You can replace one or both of your fire arms with the psychic power of your choice, and, as you move through the game and learn more powers, you transition from traditional weapons to all psychic abilities.

This parallelism plays flawlessly into the plot, as you slowly begin to side with different alien races. It is not, however, forced in any way. You could technically go through the whole game with guns, but it seduces you into playing along with this transition. I didn't even notice until the end of the game.

---- End Spoilers ----

With this amazing parallelism, and flawless writing, the game was just set up for success. Upon further inspection, the game just has amazingness at its roots.

With Will Friedle, "Eric" from "Boy Meets World", doing the main voice acting and the story written and directed by Orson Scott Card, creator of "Ender's Game", I don't know how the game could have possibly failed.....

....yet it did.

Even with its all-original orchestral score, and cinematic experience so complete, it made Avatar look like the "A Clockwork Orange" from the 70's, Advent Rising so underwhelmed revenue projections, that one year after its release, the next two parts of the trilogy had already been cancelled.

With the release of Halo around the same time, Advent rising just wasn't enough of a clone of the precedent Bungie had set-up a couple of years earlier.

Most critics murdered the game, and its fate was sealed forever in video game history; truly one of the biggest tragedies in the video game world.

All I can say is, if you ever find a copy of this game, BUY IT IMMEDIATELY. It goes without saying that I made good on my arrangement with Reach after falling in-love with this game.

For now, I'll just have to wait patiently until me and Reach are extravagantly rich enough to create our own remake of the game.

Reminding you to always find your voice,

- Blue Rose.

Reach's note: Alas, it is often the case that an imperfect world has no tolerance for perfection. We crucified Jesus, remember? The guy who could create alcohol from the most abundant source on the planet? In semi-related news, Halo: Reach actually looks different from the last three games bungie made. I thought they were just going to keep making Halo 2 there for awhile.

- New Update Schedule -

After some consideration, Reach and I have decided to cut back on our updating schedule a little bit. With the hope that a decreased quantity will mark an increase in quality, we've decided to combine entertainment/videogames and politics/current events.

I know it will be hard to go without your almost daily s-words update, but just think of it in the same respect that Christmas is so great because it only comes once a year.

Thank you for all your support out there, and continue to check back for your source of Political and Entertainment news!

Tuesday: Prima Voce - The independent page of Blue Rose
Wednesday: The Sky - The independent page of Reach for the Sky
Saturday - Politics
Sunday - Entertainment

Skate 3 and Lost Planet 2

Skate 3 is fun and definitely worth a buy. Review over.

What? Too short you say? Fine, fine, I'll give you some details. Its controls are incredibly smooth and brilliantly simple. The difficulty is spot on, entertaining new players and veterans alike. The online play is incredibly well-designed and fun, containing a variety of competitive and cooperative modes. It may not have the ridiculous and fantastic tricks of the Tony Hawk series, but the more realistic approach makes it all the more satisfying when you perform a trick that is both believable and insane. Although I question the necessity of certain features. Why do we need the ability to get off your board and beat people brainless with it? (Aside from the obvious reason of getting vengeance on an AI teammate who constantly crashes into the player in races.) Somewhat unrelated, I think we all owe the level designers of skating games gratitude. It is not easy to create a believable environment that is also fun to skate in. The only case in which I wouldn't 100% recommend it is if jobless tattooed youngsters having fun infuriate, in which case you can feel free to go back to your rocking chair on your porch chasing kids out of your lawn.

Lost Planet 2, on the other hand is an absolute tragedy. I'm not talking about the story, which is, like many, many other shooters, an excuse to shoot things. The gameplay is fairly simple, your team of 4 soldiers are supposed to...do...something. I'm going to be quite honest, I lost track of the story around the time the player's perspective shifted for the third time. The point is you kill things. You have a battle gauge which goes up when you capture command points and down when you die, when it hits zero you lose. There are giant mechanized suits, massive aliens with big squishy orange weakspots, and guns so huge they have to be mounted on two separate trains.

All of this may sound awesome, but the game itself depresses me immensely. I have never seen so many, brilliant, interesting, unique ideas be ruined by awful design. The fun combat is marred by twisted controls. Awesome boss fights are drawn out far beyond the point where they are still fun. The difficulty was at first, completely normal, but at episode 3 it spiraled out of control. There was one point at the last leg of a long, three-part battle on a train where Bluerose and I died, still learning how to work the railway gun, the aforementioned massive cannon. We were sent back to the beginning of the mission, losing thirty minutes worth of work. The sad part is that, looking back on it, the operation of the weapon was intriguing and cooperation was paramount in its use, but all I really recall from the experience is the blistering difficulty of the rest of the mission. In summary, Lost Planet 2 has the makings of an excellent, exciting game, but is defeated in a cesspool of vomit-inducing design decisions. I'd like to point out that every single problem with the game could be fixed in a patch. Not a fan of the multiplayer modes either.

Bowling Vs. Halloween

Bowling Vs. Halloween
By: Blue Rose

While throwing around the old rock tonight, a friend of mine made an excellent connection between the relatively similar levels of stupidity among drunk 25-year-olds at the bowling alley, and during Halloween.

So, in the spirit of the glory days of boxing, I've decided to set the two toe-to-toe in the ring, to see who emerges victorious.

Round 1 - Accessibility

Bowling definitely takes the first round right out of the gate. With most allies having bars built in, it is no contest for who is able to obtain alcohol easier. Halloween presents too many risks for DUIs, and DIPs for people to get too smashed out in public, but all is fair game at the bowling alley.

Round 2 - Supervision

Bowling takes a few jabs to the ribs early in this round, due to the fact that you do actually have employees at the alley who are monitoring the truly drunk people, but, Halloween gets tripped-up when most of the adults who would be out drinking have to take care of their kids for the night. And, if they're not taking care of kids, they're trying not to be so drunk that they mow them over while driving home later. So, this round ends in split-decision

Round 3 - Mob Mentality

Halloween takes this round uncontested. With throngs of people all celebrating, the bowling alley can't compete with the sheer stupidity brought on when 800 Frat boys, and 6 sorority girls, get together and through a "rager". This puts bowling to the mat for a moment, but, as he struggles to get to his knees, the inspirational music starts to play, and the bell rings for the next round.

Round 4 - Volume

Bowling comes out swinging with the fact that it has participants getting drunk 365 days a year, while Halloween only has one night. Bowling cuts, and jabs, and swings, until Halloween puts his gloves up to his face, only to meet the violent right hook of bowling.

*Down goes Halloween! Down goes Halloween!!!*

The insurmountable volume of stupid, drunk "adults" at the bowling alley every night of the week is just too much for Halloween to beat. Girls actually not seeing the problem with bowling in a skirt, cheap beer, blaring hip-hop music, and, on very special occasions, fog machines and black lights are just too much of a match for poor ol' Halloween; even with its slutty costumes.

Reminding you to always find your voice,

- Blue Rose

Applenomics

By: Reach for the Sky

I stopped using a Macintosh as my primary computer for several reasons. It was a good computer to be sure, but as a gamer I simply had no business using a computer with a severe lack of compatible games. I still used iPods for awhile, and eventually saved up enough for the iPhone 3G. It was a fine product at first, although after awhile it showed itself to be nothing more than a well-polished smart-phone. In fact,  my decision to forgo the purchasing of Apple products has very little to do with the quality of said products, but a series of business practices I can't in good conscience put money forward to support. Let's sit down and go over them.

The first is their operating system. One can not legally run mac OS X on a Windows-based PC, but one can run Windows on a mac. This is celebrated as another wonderful feature of Apple. This is akin to an orange-farming village claiming broader fruit diversity over a pear-farming village because the pear village is willing to share its fruit while the orange village hoards its oranges. The fault lies in Apple's failure to allow its software to be used with any hardware, as opposed to the current proprietary system they currently have going on. I'm not saying its wrong that they do this, and technically it is an advantage macs have over other PCs, but to pretend as though Windows compatibility is due to the capabilities of the Macintosh is dishonest.

Then I started getting interested in the DRM debate. Perhaps too interested in my own good. A devastating blow was dealt when I found that Audiosurf, a game that creates level based on any song, which would become one of my favorite games, was not compatible with my iTunes songs. This fact has thankfully changed since that day, although now Beat Hazard, another song-based game, currently faces the same problem. The DRM of iTunes' song format has gotten thankfully more lenient, although users like myself are far from owning the song we have purchased. It's all fine now though, because I use Amazon mp3, a DRM-free music provider, for my music needs now. 

It was at this point I became enraptured in the iPhone. It was all fine and good until I found out how Apple treats its app developers. Here is a detailed account of the process third-party developers have to go through. Note that developers have to pay $99 just to be able to use their software on an actual iPhone, and that there is no guarantee that anything a developer makes will ever make it onto the app store. If a developer does get his app approved, Apple then takes 30% of all profits. The only service Apple is providing the developer at that point is hosting, and considering Apple gives them no alternative and that no hosting fee should ever be that high, this is borderline thievery.

Then I looked a little bit closer at the iPhone jailbreaking situation. Let's look at some of iPhones most recently touted features.

Copy-Paste capability

Video/audio recording

Multi-tasking

Customizable interface

What do all of those features have in common (aside from being features every phone should have at this point?) All of them were features that were available to those who jailbroke their first generation iPhone. Just kidding about that last one though. That one is still only available to those who jailbreak their iPhones. You see, there is no reason the first generation iPhone couldn't do most of the things the latest iPhone can. Apple simply wanted to sell their bamboozled customers three phones instead of one. Apple is, of course, working hard to compete with third party developers who write code for jailbroken iphones.

Ha. Just kidding, obviously. They are trying to make jailbreaking an iPhone illegal. 

Everything You Need To Know About The Avengers Movie

Everything You Need To Know About The Avengers Movie
By: Blue Rose

With the release of Iron Man 2 this weekend, all of Hollywood is buzzing with rumors about who will be in the avengers movie.

------------------------------ Mild Spoilers ----------------------------------

With the surprise cutscene at the end of Iron Man 2 setting up the Thor movie to come out May 6, 2011, the entertainment news world has become a who's-who of guessing who will be in The Avengers movie in 2012.

----------------------- End of Spoilers --------------------------

1. Thor

Played by Chris Hemsworth, George Kirk from the newest Star Trek movie, Thor is the hammer-wielding Norse god who was a member of the very first, original avengers. Natalie Portman and Anthony Hopkins are both signed on to play Jane Foster and Odin respectively, and the movie promises to be one of great anticipation and CGI manipulation indefinitely.

2. Hulk

Ed Norton is rumored to be coming back as The Incredible Hulk for the 2012 Avengers movie, but he hasn't quite signed the contract yet. It is early, but Downey, Evans, and Jackson have all signed their contracts to be in the film. Whether Norton will be in it or not is any one's guess, but it looks like it'll be a hard deal to pass up.

3. Captain America

Played by Chris Evans, the 2011 Captain America film, "Captain America: The First Avenger" looks pretty promising. Evans played "The Human Torch" in The Fantastic 4, and "Jensen" in The Losers, and is the perfect actor for this role in my opinion. With his cheeky, sarcastic personality, he'll be sure to make Captain America.....interesting.

4. Hawkeye

Many rumors have been circulating around who might be this avenger, and they range from Jeremy Renner, "William James" from The Hurt Locker, to former Abercrombie and Fitch Model, Kevin Pennington. Hawkeye, the bow and arrow firing superhero (and my personal favorite Avenger), will likely make an appearance in my opinion, solely judging by the mass rumors circulating around the character.

5. The Wasp

Eva Longoria is the front runner for The Wasp in the new Avengers movie, and was reportedly seen leaving the Marvel studio headquarters with a business card, and a stack of Avengers comics. Whether or not this will turn out to be anything is any one's guess.

6. Spider Man

With the untitled Spider Man 4 movie coming out in 2012, there's been some speculation that Spider Man might make an appearance. Kevin Pennington is once again the front runner to play him, but nothing official has been released other than that Toby McGuire and Sam Raimi have both signed off for the new film.

7. X Men

Now, exactly which X Men might show up no one knows, but with the release of X Men Origins: Wolverine, and X Men: First Class coming out in 2011, it seems like they may be setting this up as well. The next X Men movie, centering around the early lives of Charles Xavier and Magneto, hasn't released much about who will be in it, and this sort of thing is classic Marvel. Let the rumors circulate, then give them the thing that was probably obvious all along.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Of course Iron Man will be returning, along with most of that cast (including scarlet Johansson as Black Widow), and there are dozens of more, less substantiated rumors including Vision, Ms. Marvel, and dozens of other super heroes, but largely this is just speculation, and not worth going into.

So there's everything you need to know about The Avengers movie coming out in 2012. As you can see, it's really just a lot of speculation, and what will actually take place, no one really knows. But, one thing is for certain: you will NOT want to miss this movie.

- Blue Rose

Final Fantasy Dissidia

Final Fantasy: Dissidia, A Review
By: Blue Rose

Now, I realize this review is probably a little dated, but it is a strong part of my personal philosophy to never pay more than $30 for a hand-held game. That's just ridiculous.

So, with GameStop's price drop of Final Fantasy: Dissidia, I decided to give it a spin.



The game is visually stunning right off the bat, and it reminds you of this with about a 20 minute cutscene.

This cutscene might have been one of the best cutscenes since the opening of Command and Conquer: Generals, but unfortunately I left the volume on. the dialogue in this game is literally the worst I have ever heard in my videogame-playing days. It's like what the result would be if you combined the script of "Minute to Win-it", an interview with Paris Hilton about her new perfume, and a slightly challenged 4-year-old.



After grinding through that experience, I dove right into the story mode, with the lowest level campaign to start off. Playing as Cecil, I made it through with not many problems until I got to the boss fight, and oh my gosh.

Dissidia stacks the fight in favor of the boss to a point where it's not even a challenge so much as it is an impossibility. For some reason it seems much easier for the boss to dodge your attacks, and impossible for you to dodge his. I remember the first time I tried to beat him, before I had even hit a button to attack, he pinned me up against a wall creating an infinite combo that killed me with ease.

So, after losing about 5 or 6 times, all of which you are penalized for, I decided to suspend gameplay and power-level though the games "quick battle" mode. As always, Final fantasy finds a way to force you to power level; grinding through enemies that yield very little rewards.

Don't get me wrong, this game is amazing. I found myself playing it for hours at a time, and 90% of the time the combat system works flawlessly. It is endlessly fun to run up a wall, jump, and smack Tidus in the face with a sword too large for any normal human to carry. The graphics are visually stunning, and the gameplay is pretty stylish, but Final Fantasy once again falls into several of the pitfalls it has in the past.

My final recommendation? Definitely give it a shot, find out if it's for you, then decide if you're going to buy it or not.


-Blue Rose

Arizona Emigration Law Boycotted

By: Reach for the Sky

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/05/06/arizona.boycott.impact/index.html

People are unhappy. Some are unhappy about the threat of racial segregation they believe is posed by the new emigration law in Arizona. Some are unhappy about what they believe is a gross over-reaction to what is essentially just a declaration of enforcement of established law. I'm unhappy that Half-Life 2: Episode 3 is projected to come out shortly after the death of my youngest grandchild.  In regards to the boycott, let's just take a moment to examen this whole story.

First of all, the main complaint is quite apparent: The new law will lead to racial profiling. Is there actually any reasoning behind this though? Some kind of evidence that no matter what the provisions added to the bill, racism will prevail? I have yet to see any, which is sort of a problem in the arguments of those opposed. I don't necessarily doubt the possibility of prejudice manifesting itself in the enforcement of the law, but without any evidence to support that idea it seems unreasonable to suddenly jump to a nation-wide boycott of Arizona because of it. Especially after changes have been made to make profiling less likely.

One senator, possibly not wanting Congress to be absolutely embarrassed by the efficiency of Arizona's state government*, has asked Brewer to hold off on the bill while Congress comes up with their own plan to solve the illegal immigration problem. There are a few problems with this request, one being that Congress couldn't throw a ball across a room in the span of one year. And while one year may not seem like a long time in ivory-tower D.C. time, that's another year of crime rates rising and jobs lost due to illegal immigration**. Brewer, thankfully, rejected the request.

One thing that really bothers me is how the boycotts are being likened to the civil-rights boycotts. Even if there was undeniable proof of profiling, that would still not even come close to the magnitude of the transgressions against minorities before the Civil Rights Movement. Using the same tactics as Martin Luther King Jr. does not put one on the same moral ground as him. In fact, this whole debate reeks of guilt by association. On three separate occasions now the Nazi-analogy has been made, due to the fact that legal immigrants will now have to carry proof of citizenship with them. This bill has been compared with Nazism so much, Darwinism feels sorry for it.

I once again encourage those against the bill to treat it fairly by not blowing a blood vessel before its effects can become apparent. Still waiting patiently for evidence that the law will permit profiling. If you find some, post it in the comments or email it to me and I'll try to respond.

*That's their job! ZING!

**Quick clarification: I'm not opposed to jobs being lost to legal immigrants. It's jobs that are given to those who can afford a lower paycheck for lack of taxes that bother me.

Flame On

By: Reach for the Sky

We've struck it rich friend. Finally, the secret to creating Macintosh backgrounds, revealed!

Jokes aside, Flame is a java app created by Peter Blaskovic as part of his "I Am Artist" project. I've never seen anything like it before, and for that I feel as though the world is empty. Er, sorry about that, these pictures are making me go all existential.  Seriously, I've never seen such a massive gallery of absolutely incredible pictures. That's the main problem with Flame, it's impossible not to make something that looks impressive, but to deliberately make something is an entirely different story. Sure you can make pretty swirly drawings all day long, but creating a simple stick figure? forget about it. I feel like this could be an incredible tool in a paint program, but it's difficult to actually translate something in your head onto the screen with it. It's a ton of fun to play around in and it's easy to use, but actually trying to create a specific effect with the sliders is a nightmare. Have fun with it, you can actually do some pretty slick stuff with it once you get the hang of it.

The World's Newest Super Villian

The World's Newest Super Villian

By: Blue Rose

Bill Gates, in his infinite wisdom, has finally come-up with a way to control the world even more than he does now....

.... A Weather Machine.

S-Words Speculation of What Said Machine Will Look Like

Bill Gates, along with several co-inventors, believes he can control certain aspects of the weather.

Now, whether or not (pun ALWAYS intended) this machine will work is under constant scrutiny among the scientific community, but this is Bill Gates. The Same man who donated $10 billion dollars for Malaria Vaccine research, likely ending the disease forever in the next 10 to 20 years.

So Bill Gates, in the last 5 years, has applied for patents for a weather-control device, and donated literally billions of dollars to potentially inject millions of people with some chemical he and his business associates designed, all while being praised as a philanthropist.

Don't you see? It's the perfect cover! He continues to bring in revenue faster than 100 Oprahs*, and it doesn't look the least bit suspicious to the majority of society, but we here at S-Words are smarter; we see that smarmy nerd for what he really is: an evil-super genius bent on world-domination.

"I'll Get you next time Gadget!!!"

Reminding you to always find your voice,

- Blue Rose

*Don't underestimate how many different ways you can spell the plural form of "Oprah".

How to Make a Terrible Movie

By: Reach for the Sky

It's not easy making a truly awful movie. Sure, you can just write a lazy story, hire actors who phone it in, and cover it up with some tacky special effects, but then you'll still only get a lackluster pop-culture cash-in like 2012. If you want to serious about your terrible movie, you have to apply yourself.

If this is your first time making a crap movie, it's a good idea to start with horror, which is particularly easy to screw up. Now you have to decide if you want to drag a franchise down with you. You could start right off the bat with a new despicable concept, like Drag Me to Hell, but remaking a part of or continuing an already fairly unsuccessful series can be just as effective. Take Final Destination*, which promises right off the bat to be universally despised by an obnoxious almost-but-not-quite-the-same-title-as-the-first-movie-in-the-series that seem to be all the rage these days. It took the series right into the ground with beyond-disgusting gore scenes(one of which even I think was too much), hilariously douche-baggish characters, and dialogue so bad it goes past self-awareness back down into unintentional hilarity. 

Last Friday, Nightmare on Elm St. hit theaters with bold new techniques for making audiences weep for their wasted money. Not content to simply make a terrible movie, or even to ruin a successful series, they actually strived to make the movie as bad as possible while fooling audiences into thinking it would be good. Every horror scene went like this: A teenager would be doing normal teenager things (reading, walking, hallucinating) and they would be accosted by subtle, creepy, atmospheric horros for a bit, which would then be completely shattered by Freddy jumping at them. It could be replicated by watching a screamer on YouTube and watching all the related videos. It stops startling the audience after a couple of times and becomes annoying and repetitive at unheard of levels. The scenes were so blatantly copied from one another they could sue themselves for plagiarism and somehow come out ahead. I once made a stab at Drag Me to Hell for cheap scares; Nightmare absolutely destroys that movie in this regard. The volume of the movie actually felt completely normal for a horror film, after I erected a sound-proof booth around my seat. It topped it all off with a lame sequel set-up, the rotted cherry atop a sundae made from anteater milk. I am not exaggerating when I say that this movie approaches The Star Wars Holiday Special in terms of outrageously bad production.

*This movie was actually quite self-aware, a parody of the Final Destination series possibly. Still pretty bad.

America Man

America Man:
A satirical analysis in the style of a 50's PSA.
By: Blue Rose

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you....

America man, the perfect model for every American Citizen. When in doubt, act like him, and you can never go astray!

America Man never wants to offend anyone, so he usually keeps his mouth shut about his convictions, out of common courtesy to others.

America man never, and I mean NEVER is allowed to criticize his government. The face of his government could stand-up, and say the F-word on international T.V., and America Man is SO patriotic, he would, in fact, encourage the man for being brave enough to not censor himself, even in the name of professionalism.

Now, while America Man clearly embodies everything we as Americans need to embrace, there is a bad guy to every story....


That's right, Propaganda Man.

While America Man is trying to spread support of his government, no matter what the situation, Propaganda Man seeks to destroy everything America Man has worked to hard to preserve.

Propaganda Man uses literally every form of media outlet, news, the paper, even the internet to hold society back from progressing.

He tells the world, in any way he can, that the government is moving in a bad direction, that, through the decreasing grasp on moral convictions in society, the government is beginning to use the people's taxes and dues to fund their own personal vendettas, and that of the lobbyists with the most convincing eyes.

Now, we all know this is ludicrous. And with citizens like America Man around, Propaganda Man's forces will be thoroughly neutralized.

So just remember, be like America Man, support your government in every single decision they make, because they are much, much smarter than you.

- Blue Rose

No Good Puns For Tom Clancy

By: Reach for the Sky

I rather enjoy games that have Tom Clancy's name on them. I hesitate to say "Tom Clancy's games" because he has about as much to do with the development as David J. West has to do with the development of individual chocolate bars. However, despite the only thing that connects them are themes relating to politics and being produced by Ubisoft, I find the games almost universally fun. Let's look at some of the series that has his logo stuck on them.

Splinter Cell

Splinter Cell games have always been about the stealthy exploits of counter-terrorist ninja Sam Fisher. On top of having great stealth gameplay, a rarity since the Thief series' collapse into a decayed mutation of its former glory, it also has interesting political stories on par with any of Tom Clancy's novels. The original style of stealth gameplay was perfected in Chaos Theory, and the franchise was taken in an exciting new direction with Conviction; get those two games, and you will have a perfect understanding of why the series is so great.

H.A.W.X.

while not exactly a series yet, being only one game long, this still stands out as a great dog-fighting game for the uninitiated and experienced alike. It follows the general Tom Clancy formula of giving the player advanced technology and tactics to believably take on a greater force. as an ace pilot working for a private military force, you have access to an advanced interface that simplifies and streamlines many complex actions such as intercepting and evading without actually doing it for you, and giving you the option to turn it off for more advanced maneuvers. between a unique UI and a selection of high-tech weapons, it stands out enough from other dog-fighting games to warrant a purchase in my opinion.

Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six

I'm doing these two together because they are very similar. For one they've both been going on for around ten years now, both involve third-person tactical action and the use of advanced technology and blah to blah blah blah. It's Tom Clancy, you know the drill. I am a fan of both of the latest games (Advanced Warfighter 2 and Vegas 2, respectively) but they are eerily similar, to an almost suspect degree. They are unique enough to justify the ownership of both, at least at the current prices, (GRAW 2-$15, Vegas 2-$10) but I suspect they were working with quite a few shared resources. Both are still fun, Vegas 2 features some great squad-based action, and AW 2 lets you use an array of drones and off-map support.I recommend either, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier comes out this year.

Watch out for T.C. games in the future, They'll probably come with Ubisoft's new, always-on DRM, which I am not on good terms with. Haven't played EndWar, sorry.