If there is one thing the Internet is good for, it’s allowing nerds to come together to take video games way too seriously.

Case in point is the idiot juice being consumed over the latest Resident Evil 5 trailers. Is it racist? Is it class warfare? I highly doubt both. The knee-jerk reaction is for me to say “STFU, you haven’t even played the game. No one has. You don’t even know what the story is.” But it goes deeper than that. The aforelinked class warfare article seems to think that all games are escapism and since he doesn’t want to shoot impoverished black people as a rule, that he can’t play this game. Well, I don’t want to shoot people as a rule myself, but that doesn’t mean that if I am put into a game situation where there are maniac killers coming at me with chainsaws, that I wouldn’t enjoy evading them and pulling the trigger. This isn’t African Village Raider just as RE4 was not Backwater European Village Destroyer. or RE1 was Chris & Jill Presents: Let’s Shoot White People! The citizens are zombified antagonists in a story that goes deeper than point gun -> shoot.  And RE5 will likely have a similar level of depth of story. What really bothers me is that people are starting an uproar about killing folks in games now, but didn’t have a problem killing police officer zombies in Resident Evil 1 or child zombies in Silent Hill, &c.,

But most importantly, games are not just escapism. You shouldn’t want to be in the character’s shoes in many games. You shouldn’t always empathize with your avatar or agree with the objectives you must complete as that character. The avatar, the enemies, the dialogue, the soundtrack, the environments, all of these are set pieces to tell a story. If you find games to be solely escapism, then I recommend that you stick with games that are rated E – most preferably sports sims.

My biggest problem with the trailer was Chris Redfield’s model. When did he become a bodybuilder with twenty inch pipes? Geeze.

Wow. Here’s a FANTASTIC machinima that could have easily been cliche and stupid. Is there hope?

I loves me my HD – can’t get enough of it. Planet Earth on Discovery Channel was a win. I was strolling leisurely through Circuit City yesterday when the giant “300″ standee with the 27 abs jumped out at me. It had the DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs there for the purchasing. I’ve been purposefully ignorant of the “next-gen” dvd format wars simply because I don’t have a player so I don’t care. I started thinking about getting an HD-DVD player when it was announced that Heroes would only be on HD-DVD. This was before I saw what highway robbery these discs were. $14 for the DVD… nice. Or $30 for Blu-Ray or $35 for HD-DVD… not so nice. There was a premium for DVDs over VHS tapes because there was a fundamental difference in the media – no rewinding, higher quality, no degradation, special features. Who is going to pay twice as much for an upgrade for only “improved quality” when the quality of DVDs is already excellent?

This makes me sad because I really wanted some Heroes in HD, but there’s no way I’ll pay twice as much for it.

Also, if you go into Circuit City while the 300 caps are over their security sensors by the doors, note how different the main character’s torso is on those covers compared to the DVD cover. It is like they painted a completely different set of abs on him to be more frightening. It doesn’t even look human.