LUX.ET.UMBRA

Argh. I can’t stand it. While I agree that environments effect a child’s raising, I truly don’t buy into the entire “it takes a village” scenario. It all starts, and ends with the parents and how much responsibility they’re willing to pick up in teaching the ways of the world to the child. So when I read about video games under attack, especially ones that are as light-hearted and humorous as Fat Princess, I just have to say something.

First off, for the kids. Eating a piece of cake will not make you fat. I don’t care who’s telling you that but if you’re going to trust me over your parents (which I don’t even want to know why I would be more authoritative in your family than your folks), cake doesn’t make you fat. Not exercising and eating too much will make you fat. Yes, the truth hurts, but portion control is key along with a healthy lifestyle. If your parents haven’t taught you that, then there you go. Voila, a lesson of life.

Next, for those that are afraid of games that will wreak havoc in their young children’s lives. Have you taken a look at television these days? Rated “M” is not the same Rated “M” a decade ago. In fact, there are several cable shows that I’ve heard on prime time use foul language. Are you to banish that from young ears for sake of corrupting innocence? Hate to break it to you, but every single one has been corrupted at an early age. There’s always some potty mouth at school that let’s your kids in on the excitingly forbidden. The question is more of how you deal with it. If your children live in a sandbox all of their lives along with you fearing everything, then they’ll grow up to …. guess what: fear everything. And there’s so much more to the world than some video game or movie. Will you always cower under the threat that nuclear war might ensue? Or that a meteor might strike the earth? Maybe Yellowstone might erupt?

The fact is, it’s YOUR responsibility in molding your kids, not the rest of the world. If you were supreme ruler of Earth, then I would probably say otherwise, but you’re not, I’m not, and we probably won’t ever be seeing one of those. So, quit shirking your responsibilities as a parent and get with it. Insults in life are a daily occurrence whether or not you like to deal with it. Same with staying healthy and not eating too much cake, just as dessert isn’t always on the menu. It’s how you manage to teach this to your children instead of passing off to people like Titan Studios. They’re in the business of entertainment, while you’re in the business of raising your kids to be be a part of society.

Tags: Games, Observation, Opinion, Society, Sony PS3 by darkmoon
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You can’t help but be thoroughly amused at this fact.
Seriously now. All payment type things from a security perspective should be a two-factor authentication. Now, if I’m not mistaken, Bank of America does have a few different types of things going on right now that allows this, but there aren’t many banks out there that actually even look into security tokens. And definitely not quite in this regard.
So when you get to the point where the gaming industry is annoyed at the entire concept of accounts being compromised and they shift to a two-factor authentication? You just have to smile and wonder when the rest of the banking industry is going to actually care enough about their clients to protect them with more secure methods.
So when will it happen? Perhaps we’ll start seeing some actual IT security that is beyond the usual 128 bit encryption by SSL certificates. Not that it’s terrible, bad, or otherwise, but it’s always the extra mile that provides the peace of mind. And two-factor authentication pretty much always provides that factor along with the enormous mathematical pains of trying to brute force these types of entry points.
Now, surely I assume that at some point someone will figure out an algorithm to create collisions that will eventually break our current two-factor entries. But you have to look at it from a perspective of the attack being algorithmic rather than brute force since the key rotates every thirty to sixty seconds.
Kudos to the gaming industry for finally saying enough is enough. And banking people? Will we continue to hear crickets chirping away?

Tags: Games, Opinion, Security by darkmoon
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Of most American animation, most are pretty… dreary. At least for those of us that actually watch anime a lot since it really just comes off as a Justice League sort of feel.
But when it came right down to it, Dead Space: Downfall was actually one of the better done short animation films. This basically was the preface of the actual game, Dead Space, and gave the story line all the way up to the beginning of that game.
There’s probably not too much reason to go directly into the story arc, but it’s for the most part a science fiction space zombie type approach. It’s not as cheesy as I make it sound either, since there’s tremendous gore involved and the actual voice acting isn’t half bad at all.
The one thing that I probably would have loved better? If they had asked Madhouse Studios to do the animation. Those of us that actually watch the genre actually know that Madhouse is pretty much king when it comes to all things gore in animation. And they do it fantastically well. But outside of that little bit? I actually found this movie to be enjoyable and totally threw me a little bit. Maybe I’ve just been spoiled by the high quality animation from the Japanese studios.

Tags: Games, Movies, Netflix, Reviews by darkmoon
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As much as your Game Informer subscription cries and complains about how you’re on your last subscription and you must renew, resist the temptation to do so…
Until it expires. Then renew. Why?
I tried to renew twice in a row now, a month early for the Edge card with Gamestop. Both times, they have said that they would give me extra months and that it wouldn’t effect my subscription or my card, but both times I was ripped off a complete month because it wasn’t a “renewal” and instead it was like brand new subscription. This went for both the card, and the actual subscription to Game Informer.
This means that you lose a whole month every time you renew early, which punishes those that want to actually support the store in a timely fashion.
Caveat emptor. If you’re having conscious in renewing your cards early, think again. Just let the sucker die out and renew it the next time you’re in the store. Believe me, no one there will be the wiser about it and you won’t miss out on a whole month of savings that you could have had.
Out of curiosity, why couldn’t you just keep pumping money or subscription months into it from the web? A card number shouldn’t be difficult to set up into your e-stores and memberships. That way, there isn’t this whole renewal nonsense. Just sign up, and keep it steady at your own pace. Ehh.
And if you think I’m a little bitter? Just a tiny bit.
Disclaimer: I am a shareholder of Gamestop

Tags: Games, Observation by darkmoon
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Degeneration is one of the few animated films that doesn’t really suck. That’s mainly because a lot of it has to do with the fact that there’s a lot taken from the game universe and since Resident Evil 2, Claire Redfield and Leon Kennedy finally are together again.
The entire film is actually fairly interesting and action-packed although I found the whole love interest for Leon absolutely horrifying. Angela Miller, whom was supposedly a SRT (Special Response Team) member and wasn’t a rookie cop anymore, had about as many problems with defending herself as a scared cat. And that was not only horrible, but sort of pathetic.
Don’t get me wrong. Resident Evil: Degeneration was definitely a great animated film and I would watch it again. The voice acting cast came from the top English speaking voice actors. But, it definitely could have done without the Angela Miller character altogether and just made it into a complete action/horror film.

Tags: Games, Movies, Netflix, Reviews by darkmoon
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You have to admit. When it comes to fans, there’s nothing cooler than the ones that are willing to go through the trouble of creating their own works based on whatever they’re a fan of.
And here, we have the Silver Wolf, recreated from Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, as a rubber band gun. Not just any rubber band gun though. One that has a safety, has an integrated light, integrated laser, fold out handle, and super accurate even when squeezing the trigger off for multiple shots.
Overall, the entire thing looks absolutely spectacular. Beats screwing with making a gun with your hand. I mean, laser sights? The laser is way more accurate than the actual range of the rubber band!
In any case, check out why this is absolutely just sweet.

Tags: Gadgets, Games, Sony PS3, Toys by darkmoon
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Game Key Revealer is just like its brethren, SoftKey Revealer except it’s for games for the PC. With support over 500 games, this basically allows you to keep your games handy if you’ve installed them but had forgotten where you’ve placed the media itself.
With how big drives have become, this actually isn’t that difficult to do. But in case you need to just dump all your serials and keys into a file, Game Key Revealer can do that. For Windows only.

Tags: Games, PC, Tips and Tricks, Windows by darkmoon
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This last Friday, I received my latest acquisition. The PlayStation 3 80 GB Metal Gear Solid 4 Pack. So far, I’ve held out in buying a next-generation console due to the fact that the price was incredibly high and there just wasn’t as much in incentives (all the great games were not out yet).
No more. Bundled with Hideo Kojima’s latest creation, Metal Gear Solid 4, this amazing game not only captivated the fan in myself, but it drew in others in the surreal graphics and directing. It truly is a joy to play when the game is practically an interactive movie. Which is also why I think Kojima should direct the live-action MGS film instead, but that’s a whole other story.
The bundle above is actually a bit difficult to get and it comes with an 80G Playstation 3, the new DualShock wireless controller, and a free download of Pain, alongside MGS4. The Limited Edition bundle comes with a few more discs (soundtrack, and MGS4 extras) and is painted gun metal gray along with a gun metal gray controller. But don’t stop now! If you’re not yet satisfied with the MGS4 offerings, there are still other bundles that you could get your hands on before they’re gone. Japan has released not only the usual black Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots [Premium Pack], but also a white one, and a satin silver edition.
This bundle deal is not only worth your while, but getting the system with the new DualShock 3 controller (all previous SixAxis controllers didn’t have the old Playstation shock vibration function) and a game that has been rated perfect scores in both Japan, Europe, and the United States, has got to be worth it. It’s actually more buying each separately, but we won’t go into that. It was a brilliant move to package it in limited release with one of the greatest series games. Sony XMB interfacing has also come a long ways, by copying the PSP interface and enhancing it further.
So what are you waiting for? You have got to be feeling that nostalgic want to start screaming: Snake? Snake!? SNAAAAAAAKKKKEE!

Tags: Games, Reviews, Sony PS3 by darkmoon
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Just recently, SciFi put out Fidgit, another gaming news site. Here’s the rub. No one knows exactly why SciFi is doing this.
It’s very similar to the whole “ratings” game I suppose when they brought ECW into the mix. Had absolutely nothing to do with the core channel, but they were desperate for other people than the core group I suppose. Very similar to how G4 took a nosedive and still trying to reinvent itself.
Well, Fidgit is here to stay at least for a while, so here are the few issues with it right off the bat. First, the immediate reaction is that there’s no content there that I can’t get from Joystiq, IGN, or 1UP. It doesn’t specialize in anything (of which, specializing in science fiction based games would be one way to re-gain niche market control and then eventually your growth business could extend out into other genres.
But the biggest thing? It’s the CNAME. I can’t get past how super noob it is. The actual URL is http://fidgit.com and if you try to use the www CNAME, it does a forward to fidgit.com instead of actually also resolving to the same place. From a tech perspective, that’s just … non-professional. Everyone in the free world all use www. So not having it is just plain weird.
Maybe it’s just me, but it’s really not grabbing me and there’s no niche that it plays, so it’s not even worth throwing into my feed readers. Maybe the site will grow up a little later on and will be worth revisiting, but currently it’s just not my cup of tea.
Love SciFi. Hate Fidgit.

Tags: Blogging, Games, Internet, Media, Opinion by darkmoon
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Okay. Yes, I did sit and watch all two and a half hours of it. But believe me, I went in thinking it was much worse than it was. First off, it was produced and directed by Uwe Boll. No offense to the guy, but he puts out some pretty ugly movies based on games. I’ve yet to see one of them that really just shined.
But I will give some credit to this movie, since there was enough of a decent cast to actually hold it together for a slightly better than B-rated fantasy flick. The script wasn’t as typical as usual for Boll’s films, and with Statham holding down the fort as the protagonist and beautiful Forlani carrying the damsel in distress role, it actually worked out somewhat.
I will say that the ending was pretty cheesy, but that’s pretty typical. There was also a lot of influence it seemed from Lord of the Rings. Right off the bat, not only the helicopter shots of ridge walking, to the main battle scenes, all reminded of Two Towers on a lesser scale.
In the Name of the King – A Dungeon Siege Tale actually surprised me. The tale was a bit long, could have been a bit more exciting, but the overall Boll cheese factor was lessened which is a dramatic improvement based on historical trends. Now if only the name wasn’t so friggin’ long…

Tags: Games, Movies, Reviews by darkmoon
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