Alas, teaching doesn't pay what it should - as a result, only low-performers and bright-minded idealists are even remotely interested in it. My girl is one of those optimists who wanted to make a difference. She spent almost a decade teaching literature in inner-city schools. She has been shot at by students,…

No, they get eviscerated for not saying anything, and then get lambasted for providing an equally ambiguous response.

Girlfriend describes herself as "culturally Jewish" in that she shares a heritage with folks who practice the ritual elements of Judaism and hold beliefs specific to that faith. She knows all of the family history, understands the elements that are important to that cultural group - she just doesn't buy into the…

Hey, I heard that Commander Shepherd was Jewish!

Always hated the "No Russian" mission. Aside from revealing how on-rails the MW2 campaign experience was, your inability to interact with the mission in a meaningful fashion by shooting your terrorist "friends" in the back, thereby saving the day as hero... Would have been illegal orders to proceed by the CIA. That op…

I'm a little more concerned about the greed of advertising here rather than any privacy concerns. Was it the old head of NBC complaining because it was our civic duty to watch commercials on network television, and ignoring them was tantamount to "stealing" their show as a freeloading pirate?

Ghost was memorable? He was the Boba Fett of MW2! He gets maybe thirty to forty seconds of screentime total in two appearances! The first time is when he silently takes out some electrodes from the car battery to "elicit information" from a subject in an illegal and unorthodox manner, and the second time is when he…

So glad that someone else noticed this about the design. I'd also add that the genophage is described as a retrovirus, which makes sense given its latency and relative innocuousness. It also probably inserts itself all over the genome in non-transcribing regions with an operator triggered for transcription by…

Oh, agreed. The overrated Boba Fett character in a game already light on plot. I never understood why so many of the fanboys were excited about either of them. Sure, one of them has neat armour and the other has a skull-faced balaclava, but no more unusual a presence than any other Star Wars bit character or faceless…

I live here, and allow me to save you some time: do not move here. It just isn't worth it. Land and rent is higher than most of America, and wages are lower than in most of America. I want out as soon as possible.

Given how many times "Maniac Mansion" has been recreated on different platforms, I was truly surprised that they didn't follow up the "Monkey Island" revision with that classic. I go back and play it on my C64 emulator, and it remains playable in its original version to this day, so a cleaned-up graphically-improved…

Glad we have you here to decide these things. Maybe you can help me with a conundrum:

Look, if I accept money from a corporation for my time, am I a workwhore? If I get picked to represent my organization as a spokesperson at events because I can speak loud and clear, have a friendly demeanor, and have been told that I clean up well in a suit, am I whoring for my company?

I am with you - I'm not sure how this kid managed to become arbiter of what "real" gamers are or are not. My sister builds games for a living as a professional, and plays them in her spare time when not working. If she put a camera up and talked about game design elements while she played (layout, color, interactive…

This. Well said, sir. Some of the responsibility for interpretation is upon the audience and not the artist.

I agree. I had friends in high school who didn't feel comfortable coming out until college, and it always blew me away by how difficult it must have been for them to quietly pretend to live up to others' expectations for them. Mind you, learning of our friends' preferred sexuality sooner did not and would not have…

To quote my own mother (of whom I am very fond!) on this issue, "I am your mother and I love you, and because I love you I am responsible for you. And if you ever do anything like this, I will personally end you because I love you and I am responsible for you."

Yeah, but he is still THIS Brad Wardell, too:

Yeah, we're big on high fives in my house.