Girls in Gaming
Hold on to your seat boys because your going to read about some really high end players that are girls, you heard right I said girls who are world class hard core gamers and would kick your ass interested now are we, then read on. I have been playing PC games for many years now, and in the past girls were not heard of much.
Gaming, in lots of ways, is one of those great equalizers. What makes a good gamer isn't age or race. It's talent - the ability to think on your feet, to move your thumbs at super speeds. True, there are some other issues involved: time, money, aptitude. But for the most part, with dedication and practice, anyone could earn gaming respect.
In our society, videogames are toys for boys. The media and the industry discourage girls from gaming by not including them in the big picture. No Christmas special tells the story of how little Susie got her very first first-person shooter. Girl gamers are tomboys, and always considered inferior to their male counterparts. For a lot of girls, the only way they've come in contact with gaming at all is merely by association.
Over on Hawty McBloggy, blogger angel provides a humorous little rant about some of the nonsensical idiotisms that male gamers say to females while on Xbox Live.
The attempt at witty banter by certain guys in the online gaming community just adds credence to the fact that certain men regress back to adolescence when faced with a female who can kick their ass on the Halo battlefield. I am not trying to come across as some flannel clad woman with a mullet, I am intelligent and worldly enough to know that not all gamers (or non-gamers) of the male persuasion are this moronic. What baffles me is that other guys do not call each other out when they see them acting like imbeciles. It just makes the rest of you look bad, and that is what bothers me the most. Stop letting the stereotypical male halfwit drag you into the noob abyss with them. I mean, females already have it rough with the stereotypical “female gamer” tag hovering over their heads like a dark moist cloud. The majority of gal-gamers do not enjoy titles such as Horsez, Desperate Housewives, Strawberry Shortcake or titles that involve shopping or concocting new make-up colors. We play games with blood, gore, bullets, and magic spells that will rip your character a new one! So get used to girls excelling at games like Halo, Condemned, RE, WoW, Manhunt, and GTA. We like to blow things up and hack off limbs as much as you do - if this somehow hurts your ego and diminishes your male pride then YOU are the one with issues. Not the female-gamer.
Top 10 Things Female Gamers Hear on Xbox Live is listed below.
- Are you a girl? You can't be a girl. Everybody knows girls don't play video games.
- Are you playing on your brother's/boyfriend's account?
- You must be a fat and ugly since you play video games.
- Shouldn't you be playing Barbie Horse Adventures?
- Hey sweetheart/beautiful/baby doll. How you doing?
- Dude. Dude! Are you a girl? Will you be my friend? Dude, accept my friend request! Let's hook up!
- How old are you? Where do you live? Do you have a MySpace page?
- Girls belong in the kitchen. Go make me a sandwich.
- Are you a boy? When are your balls gonna drop?
- You sound hot! I bet your hot. Are you hot?
Unreal Tournament Game Review
Unreal Tournament 3 probably shouldn't feel as fresh and as exciting as it does. But when you get down to it, UT3 changed a lot of the things that you liked about UT 2004 namely it's way better looking . It's still the same fast-moving and action-oriented first-person shooter. Yet the game's new maps, the graphical overhaul, and easy-to-understand gameplay modes all feel great. The way the shooter genre has changed over the three years since the previous game is also a factor. With most other games slowing things down and going for a more realistic pace, UT3's hyper-charged gameplay explodes out of the gate feeling all new again.
The maps you'll see in the single-player campaign are the same maps you'll see online, at least until the mod-making scene shifts into high gear. Overall, the map quality is high, with plenty of interesting level layouts for the objective-based modes. One death match map, called Gateway, has multiple areas that look really different, all are linked together with portals. You'll also get a new remake of the classic Unreal map Deck. Also the Unreal mod community has always been pretty busy, At first, Unreal Tournament 3 might seem just a cosmetic upgrade to an already old formula, but once you start to really dig in, you get a sense for how much things have changed and how different the playing field now is.
Unreal Tournament 3 uses Unreal Engine 3, the same basic set of tools that powered Gears of War. As such, this is a really great-looking game on high-end machines. But even if your PC isn't top of the line, the game scales better than most, giving you a playable experience on midrange machines as well. But, of course, the game is at its best when you're exceeding the game's minimum requirements, in situations where you can run at a high resolution and still get a great frame rate.
On the whole, Unreal Tournament 3 is nothing really new. But that doesn't matter; its predecessors were so much fun that no ground breaking changes were needed, really. It won't convert anyone who didn't like Unreal Tournament in the first place, but you'd have to be mad to think like that, anyhow. This game is pure fun. UT has a fan base that is extremely loyal and they make each game a huge success. It's great fun of course, and UT3 had done nothing that will put off fans of the genre, get your self a copy you won't be disappointed....More
Clive Barkers - Jericho Review
Codemasters has teamed up with horror author Clive Barker, to create a Supernatural Horror First Person Shooter. Jericho features a very strong storyline and squad based play but has severely fallen into the shadows of the other FPS titles of this year. With a strong storyline created by Clive Barker and the team at Codemasters, will Jericho surprise and be one of the best Horror FPS games of this year?
You play as the leader of the Jericho Squad, Captain Devin Ross and your soul job is to stop the evil from escaping the ruined city of Al Khali and banish the Firstborn back into the Abyss. You start off at Al-Khali in modern times and quickly jump around the timeline to the days of World War II, The Crusades, Ancient Rome and of course the original domain of the Firstborn back in the 4th Millennium BC. To cap off a great horror game you also need the soundtrack to match every situation, be it running through a dull lit hallway or about to be jumped by some horrific looking enemy. Jericho captivates you in every situation and its vast array of music perfect for this game.
The AI for the enemy’s is pretty decent too, and the graphics look very good they don’t have many tactical skills but they try and take the injured team members or the ones with heavy weapons out first. Basically they are just the same old enemy’s you see in any game, with no flanking tactics or abilities.
The lighting effects in Jericho are brilliant and very realistic, which you would hope for because you are running around with the flashlight half the time due to the dark and eerie levels of this Horror Game. Jericho is one of those games which have fallen into the shadows of the other FPS titles to launch this year and hasn’t really been mentioned as much as it deserves. Jericho is simple amazing and one of the best horror games of 2007. Jericho is one of the most atmospheric horror games I have played and is one of those FPS Horror fanatics must check out.