IGN’s Woke Rambo: Last Blood Review

“Irresponsible politics” is all I need to read to know this review was written by someone who regularly partakes in eating lead paint chips, and huffs his own farts over the weekend. Offensive? Violent? Sign me up! The new movie checks all the boxes I need in a Rambo movie: Rambo, Rambo killing and plenty of gore and explosions. I mean it’s obviously not going to recreate the magic of First Blood. If it’s a half entertaining murder fest like the last Rambo movie was though, it will be entertaining. This reviewer is absolutely horrendous, the very first paragraph of the review: “When Rambo first whipped out his hunting knife and began eviscerating small town sheriffs, it was meant to be seen as the final, tragic crack in the soul of a broken man” Obviously the reviewer never watched First Blood.

In said movie Rambo was being pushed over the edge and driven to violence against his will, by a role projected into him by outside forces. So when he is finally pushed that far it is the final crack in the soul of a broken man, that’s the whole point of First Blood. It is obvious the only thing the reviewer cared about is the negative portrayal of the Mexican cartels in the movie. You know those upstanding citizens that runs weapons, drugs, humans, who prey on the weak and terrorize their own people. A quick Google search tells us Mexico has 3 cities in the top 10 most dangerous cities in the world, and owns the top spot with Los Cabos with a homicide rate of 111.33 per 100,000 people. If you think these facts and portrayals are culturally insensitive then you are an uneducated dumb ass…

RPG Consent Checklist: Yes it is a real thing…

Someone recently sent me this “RPG consent checklist” that they were presented with when joining a local pen and paper D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) gaming session:

At first, I thought it had to be a joke someone quickly sat down and made up this consent form for some shit and giggles, but then I realized it being the current year of 2019 that this in fact in all likelihood is actually real and not made up. And that someone actually sad down had a good think about it before putting it on paper. I can only imagine how long it would take to get a D&D session going while trying to cater to everyone’s moral sensitivities. Not to mention how downright dull and boring it would be with everything on the list either being removed or watered down. Now if you will excuse me:

Opinion: Video Games don’t need an easy mode

Before we start there seems to be a disingenuous straw man being put forward by video game journalists where they conflate accessibility options in video games with difficulty levels, either done out of pure ignorance or out of malice, so they can use disabled gamers as a shield to hide behind and call anyone who disagrees with them ableist. Accessibility options gives disabled gamers the ability to customize controls and control inputs, macros, color-blind options, visual cues that match sound cues, ability to reduce visual effects/clutter ect. I can only imagine that there is nothing quite as insulting to a disabled gamers as someone telling you that you need babies first difficulty setting just because you have a disability. Now if you as a disabled person want to play easy mode, cool go for it but don’t expect game companies to always comply.

Yes admittedly, sometimes the difficulty in some video games is a completely superfluous element that can be changed without compromising the core experience of the game itself. Other times the difficulty is tightly inter wound with other gameplay elements of the game to produce something special like Dark Sould, Cuphead or Sekiro: Shadows Dies Twice. You cannot make changed to a video games difficulty level each and every time and expect the gameplay experience to remain the same. Every developer should make the game they want. If they want to make an easy, story focused game it’s fine. But if they want to make a hard game that takes a lot of skill to beat, it’s fine too. Simply put video game difficulty is not a right for gamers or a developer’s obligation to deliver an easy mode.