Low Five!: Battlefield "5" Goes Beyond Historically Inaccurate

Credit goes to whoever made this image

 

Well, Battlefield V is revealed and it's set in WWII...for better and worse, and well it seems things are getting out of hand, namely with women soldiers being the focus of controversy, especially since the featured woman in question in the trailer is a disabled woman and has blue face paint on her like she's trying out for some reenactment of Braveheart. That and some dudes (some of them dark skinned)  have the same face paint and one of them is having a katana on his back, even though one nation's forces had that weapon and it was Imperial Japan, who were obviously on the side of the Axis. Already the apologists for the game's more than necessary inaccuracies from the mainstream "gaming press" are out in droves labeling anyone brining this up as "angry childish misogynist gamergate losers" (again with labeling Gamergate as an "evil" thing), missing the whole point of the controversy going on, namely that the game's featuring more women and minorities than the setting allowed.

And yes I know that the BF games set in WWII prior to this are not entirely accurate, for one both sides of the conflict aren't wielding the correct weapons for their respective forces (MP40s for Imperial Japan and the Germans having STG44s before 1944 anyone?), that and there were factual accounts of women and non-whites serving in WWII (and that there were plenty of non white combatants in BF1 and that they too were in WWI) but the liberties taken with BFV are getting ridiculous. I mean when I first saw this trailer, I thought this was some Valkyria Chronicles-esque take on WWII by Western (or rather Swedish) developers (minus the anime elements) or a more ahistorical take on the conflict like that one Furious Four "reboot" of Band of Brothers was going to be (and very much so) not a game with at least some close adherence to the setting like BF 1942 and 43 did. Even worse is that the director of this game chose to have this kind of liberty with more women soldiers than necessary is because he wanted to not only please his daughter but to be on the "right side of history"; funny, I thought trying to make nonsensical statements like "Hitler did nothing wrong" was the opposite of being on the right side. If anything, I feel like this might be a corporate mandated decision to keep SJWs pleased and anyone who's not (like yours truly) suffer; Rich of ReviewTechUSA has this theory too. I guess EA hasn't learned how the 2016 Ghostbusters "reboot" went when it tried to be on the "right side of history". That and I have noticed that this game got promoted on Memorial Day while caring less about what people learned in history class, real classy (sarcasm). Hell, the stuff like Kancolle is more historically accurate than this upcoming disappointment, so maybe perhaps EA should have made it something more akin to that BF Heroes game if it wants to be inaccurate for the sake of fun?

Frankly I'm more upset that EA and DICE chose to revisit WWII, especially on the Western European front and I honestly wish they chose something else like the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Balkan front, WWII related but are underrepresented areas for the franchise to explore. I mean the Polish, the various Balkan forces (including the Yugoslav Chetniks and Titoist partisans), the Arabs, the Chinese, the Koreans, and course the Jews deserve representation in a WWII game, you know something that should be highlighted and advocated for? not "oh let's put some MOAR blacks and some disabled wominz in the armed forces that DIDN'T have such personnel, or rather much in regards to blacks", like so many SJWs clamor for? And funny enough we still haven't had the Holocaust represented in some shape or form aside from that brief picture of the concentration camp prisoners from COD: WWII (and some other games like Valkyria Chronicles which take place in an alternate fantasy universe of sorts), again something that should be advocated for and that SJWs might agree with since it involved ACTUAL oppression not made up s--t that they like to think the USA is supposedly doing right now? I just don't get these losers, but I know for a fact that I will never please these bums, just nope. That and I'm not buying this game, ever, even when it rightly avoids having gacha-lootboxes.

I don't know about you but I'd rather put my money on something better, like SNK Heroines for the Switch or Making History: The Second World War for the PC; or Battlefield 1/0 or flippin' anything (but Metal Gear Survive and almost the whole mobage library).

A Cynical Brit No More: In Memoriam of Totalbiscuit

A real consumer advocate and a gentleman, RIP.

I'm quite late to the news given that I was on vacation in New York City, but still I must comment on this sad turn of events. On that day in history, on May 24th, 2018, John P. Bain, aka. Totalbiscuit, passed away from cancer. When I heard about this from a good friend of mine on DA, I was a hell of a lot more shocked than sad, given that not too recently on May 1st of this year he retired from reviewing games due to his health regarding the battle with cancer and stuck to playing games with his wife; at that time I theorized he would have about 1 to 2 years to live. The reason I expressed shock at the time when he died is simply because his death arrived much earlier than I thought and during the time between then and his retirement I simply prepared myself for his eventual death from cancer (though I admittedly missed the memo that he possibly can die in 2018 and he did). God, thinking about then and now makes me wonder if we of humanity wasted our time and energy getting wrapped up in dumpsterfire covfeffe politics instead of finding a cure for cancer; hell I felt more angry at our constant failure to do so (and kind of right now as of this writing). Even so when d-bags come out and think his death made them happy and say a bunch of garbage stuff that somehow justifies his death, especially that guy from Bioware, as if he was a part of ISIS or Justin Carmical. F--k them, but I'm not going to waste my time and energy ranting about them, since I feel like it wouldn't do TB service, especially after his untimely passing. I'm well aware of his recent dumb behavior involving him being exclusionary towards Trump supporters and people who voted for him, his negative overreaction to the "Are Traps Gay?" thing and suggesting the fake news media hold the current POTUS accountable when the reality is not so, but I'm not bothering to go over them either so instead I'll focus on my positive experience with him and the good he did in his life, and it's better this way.

I first came across him sometime in January 2013, when Angry Joe was doing a top 10 list of worst games made in 2012 in his experience and one of the segments had Bain doing a voice over commentary on the game featured in said segment, Gettysburg: Armored Warfare. I was quite intrigued by the work of the guy who did a pretty good summary of how bad the game is in spite of its unique concept. And admittedly did get hooked on his work, seeing his take on truly bad games like The War Z (aka Infestation), Rambo the Video Game, and Day One: Garry's Mod (of which he stood up to the wrongful takedown of that video in question after it came out at the time), hell I would encourage you to look them up (if you haven't already) to see how well he exposes the horrid quality of the games in question. Not to mention he was quite a good ally in the ongoing Gamergate controversy (or rather war) when much of the mainstream media was bashing the GG group by ripping the garbage "Gamers Are Dead" articles a new um, organ along with the trash comparisons of gamers to ISIS and responding to nonsensical statements by the ExtraCreditz schmucks. Not to mention he held many podcasts called the Co-optional Podcasts, on various videogame related topics with many guests such as AngryJoe, Nerdcubed, Jim Sterling (that chump), Superbunnyhop, and Yatzhee Croshaw; and plenty of them were enjoyable (especially the one on Metal Gear 7: Phantom Pain on the day the game came out) though I have not seen them all and frankly not in the mood to, I have other things to do you know. But I will say that he managed to be a pretty good game reviewer even in a time when many mainstream reviewing sites were becoming unreliable (and I'm pretty sure still are), and keeping up his ouput of interesting content even when he was succumbing to cancer since his unfortunate acquisition of it in 2014; it's safe to say he fought to the bitter end to keep his channel going. Though admittedly I lost interest in his work when he began to have less and less negative WTF Is...? videos but I respected his choice to do so in regards to his health and me again other things to do in life.

I haven't kept up on what's going on with him outside of his struggle with cancer until his passing but I will say that never did wish death on him, quite the opposite in fact. I mean the best thing I can wish people is to live as long as possible ideally for around 100 years at least but sadly that doesn't happen often (but hopefully I might but that's another story), especially in regards to Bain. He was one of those fellows online and offline that I can like and respect and dislike in some regards over those after mentioned issues in the first paragraph but still like to an extent. I just don't think we'll ever see someone who is as talented as him again for a long time, no matter how good whoever's the "spiritual successor" can be; it's one of those times that well make me upset when good talented people die and bad dudes don't (but then again there was Justin Carmical and the recent allegations of his sleazy Weinstein-Cosbyite antics), no matter how timely their deaths are. I will give my condolences to his wife Genna and his son who now have to live without him and so do we the gamer and internet community, he definitely will be missed, no matter how highly or lowly we think of him.

I hereby salute him in honor of his contribution to gaming culture, farewell friend.

First, They Came for the Porn: Valve Removes Eroge from Steam

What a week, just before I go off on an awesome trip to New York City, ANOTHER shooting breaks out, in a Texan high school no less just today (and no I'm not bothering to make a blog about it, no sir), with the guaranteed crazies coming out to exploit it and pee on the graves of the lives lost (hell, I could just make a music video making fun of the idiotic responses blaming everything but mental illness sometime in the future), and Trump being an ignorant chump on the issue (and I'll note that I quite dislike him now after him needlessly escalating tensions in Syria), and of course Steam, that naked-ass monopoly on PC ownership, acting up. This time concerning Eroge, or Hentai games or porno games, but for consistency's sake I'll use the first term, in that they're being lately taken down with the developers of said games getting a notice from Valve (and thanks to some friend on DA and the KiA subreddit notifying and informing me on this).

Now to be clear, I'm not into Eroge since I quite frown on degenerate stuff (and quite strict on pornography) but even I am hesitant to ban them since if they go then the non-Eroge Eastern-games go then Western ones too, i.e. all games go. I know this is a slippery slope argument but there is a truth to it (that and the free speech thing too, though that's another blog for another time), namely that people have this crappy-ass dated view that all anime is hentai (sort of like that d-bag troll Mariotehplumber rambles on about) and both terms are "synonymous". I find that view to be a-well...retarded and so is the reasoning behind the take-downs of the games in question. What surprised me is that the organization who advocates for it and claims credit for the nutty actions is none other than the NCOSE (National Center on Sexual Exploitation), an anti-sex exploitation group who is aligned with religious groups and conservatives, giving the impression it's a rightwing group of sorts (and I don't mean it in a good way), yet are actually working with the US Democrats...go figure. When I first saw their "victory" page, I could have sworn it was from the radical feminist SJW's (you know the type that go around the world and spout this nutty s--t about the "patriarchy" ruling the West and such and such), but nope it wasn't the case, yet it's eerily the same garbage the "progressive" left would espouse so talk about a horseshoe theory in practice. And of course Vice is treating this like a bad thing (of which it is) even though they had articles that advocated for this by sane non-gullible observers.

Considering all of this, I would say that this needs to be stopped for the good of gaming, and besides Eroge isn't worth the attention, like hasn't Valve ever heard of this awesome invention called...um, the AO RATING?! like....you know the rating that MANY, and I mean MANY Eroge, both Eastern and Western made, DESERVE?! Where the hell is the ESRB in all of this? Oh right they're sitting on their thumbs and probably smoking pot (or something like that) than do anything HELPFUL; afterall it is the same organization that thinks gacha-lootboxes aren't a bad thing that's LITERALLY hurting gaming. That and some games (mainly visual novels) don't come with an ESRB rating, so it's almost like it's pointless in those cases. And I bring this up is because well last I checked people under 18 AREN'T allowed AO rated games, at all, more so than people under 17 getting M rated games (though that's another story) nor are allowed on non-PC systems (again another story), so when Valve under the leadership of the supposedly "godly" Gabe Newell  addresses this, they should be reminded to REINFORCE the AO rating so that you know it can a place in gaming. That and give people Half-Life 3, I'm sick and tired of them going on about it being "confirmed" a quadrillion times.