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Hi everybody. I'm not sure if coming to this forum (or another forum period) was the right choice or not, but I'm trying it out for now to test the waters. As I said I've been a video game fanatic all my life. I started with the NES when I was 5 years old, and now I'm 34, so... yeah. I like most genres of games, but my favorites tend to be RPGs and Action/Adventure style games. For the last couple months I've been addicted to this game called Genshin Impact. Its really strange, for me, for there to be a whole genre of video game I've never heard of, but I've learned that there is: Gacha (or as people often like to call them, "mobile", which kind of annoys me because Mobile is a platform, not a genre). I learned (and am in a sense still learning) all about this mobile and Gacha stuff from the other forum that I'm coming from, which is actually the official forum for Genshin Impact. Its a game that I recognize as having a great many serious flaws (apparently almost all of which are typical traits of these "Gacha" games), but I like the positives of it too much to stop playing entirely. Basically, my reason for wanting to come to a different gaming forum (and a more general one) is because I feel like I've gotten attached to coming online to the forum and talking about the game I'm playing regularly. But maybe half of the people there seem to have a completely different mindset towards video games than I do, like they've never played "normal' video games before (even though many of them claim they have). I've been the recipient of much adversity and even hostility for simply attempting to constructively criticize the aspects of the game I dont like, even though I spend just as much time talking about the things I do like, or talking about things that maybe could be improved. I guess my hope was that at a more general forum, people would be likely to be more like me, and see things more the way I do, and most importantly, not be dicks when I share an opinion that people don't like.

I have to agree here - I think Medal Of Honor has done the Nazi a bit more service in terms of making them seem like an organized threat. I don't think I've seen a game actually depict the Nazis accurately as in the concentration camps, burning Jews alive, the various experiments done on said Jews. Most video games just skim over the details.

Please vote in the poll above. This is for marketing purposes. We would like to know age group(s) we need to advertise toward. A balanced community will be beneficial to everyone here at VGR. Feel free to reply to this thread with your age if you wish. Make sure you vote in the poll no matter what. Kind discussion is welcome.

This is a little game that's nothing more than a chance to be funny and creative. What to do is completely ruin a video game, movie, TV show or book by changing just one word from the title. I'll go first.

PART 1 - CHOOSING YOUR RAT You need to decide first off whether you want them to breed or not. If you don't want them breeding then you need to choose only one sex. Either male or female. Both genders typically get along well with each other, but there is always a hierarchy. One rat will be dominant. They will "battle" for dominance, but it is almost never true violence. They tend to wrestle or box more. Once you decide on your gender, decide how many you want. Rats are social animals and will not do well alone. I highly recommend a minimum of 4 rats. The more rats you get the better their health will be. Both physically, and mentally. They need the companionship of other rats to survive. PART 2 - RAT BEHAVIOR AND MENTALITY As said already there will always be a hierarchy. Dominance will often be challenged and you will see your rats battling it out. But just because they are chasing each other and wrestling doesn't mean mutiny. They are very playful animals. They romp and run just like children. They are actually quite entertaining to watch. They are also extremely smart animals. They remember like an elephant. If you mistreat them they remember it and will not trust you. If you are kind to them they will like you better. They love to explore. New surroundings mean new places to see. But unless you buy a rat ball, this is not a good idea to let them do. A full grown rat can squeeze through a hole the size of a quarter. Once they do that, they are most likely gone for good. Rats are nesters. They need a lot of material to build a nest. In the wild a colony can have up to 100 rats that are constantly maintaining the colonies nest. They sleep a lot. They burn a lot of energy when they are playing, and tend to wear themselves out fairly quickly. It's not good for their health to try to play with them when they are trying to sleep. Wait until they wake up on their own. Typically rats don't bite or claw, unless they feel threatened. If you don't present yourself as a threat you will do fine, but you do need to present yourself as the dominant one. If they feel that they are dominant over you, you will never be able to handle them. Rats will however, give you a very light nibble from time to time. This is what's known as a rat kiss. It's the same as when a dog licks you. It's a sign of affection, and nothing to be afraid of. PART 3 - RAT HOUSING There are many types of housing choices for rats. You can get what are called "rat cities", which tend to run $200-$300 typically. Or you can get a simple wire cage or aquarium. I recommend an aquarium for beginners, because rats are extremely skilled escape artists. Depending on the number of rats you get would determine the minimum size of aquarium you need. It would be best to base it by rat. A typical aquarium for example is 20 gallon. With 4 rats, that's 5 gallons of space per rat. That's a good base to start. Of course you can go bigger if you want, but you should choose a reasonable base of space. You will need to have a very secure way of keeping their habitat secure so they don't get out and run all over. Clips on an aquarium lid work well. The clips do slide off, but can be difficult to get off, so you may have to slip something under the clip top to lift it such as a screwdriver or a heavy blade knife. Rats need something to chew and gnaw on. They have a natural instinct to chew. If they don't have something steady to chew on, they will start chewing on each other. They will go after the weakest link in the chain. Then you'll lose one of your babies. The best thing is an edible shelter. A good brand is SnakShak. It doesn't have to be anything super fancy, but you need something that would stand up to however many rats you get. If it doesn't last at least a little while, you will be spending a lot of money replacing them. Rats need exercise. Just romping in their home doesn't do it. You need to get them a wheel. Or two if you prefer. These are great for letting them run to their hearts content and keep them in shape. The type of bedding you choose matters a lot. There are a lot of bedding's you will see at your pet store. You will see everything from wood chips, to pebbles, to sawdust. For rats, get the sawdust. Wood chips are dangerous for rodents. They can get splinters, or pieces of wood stuck in their teeth, which can cause a lot of problems. The pebbles would also cause health problems since you can't just clean out the pebbles and put new ones in when you clean their cage. And if they were to eat them, it would most likely kill them. The healthiest for them, and your wallet is the sawdust. If you go with a wire cage, you need to put something soft on the bottom so they're not on wires all the time. A fleece blanket or sweatshirt is perfect. They will move it around to where they want it, and they will tear it apart, so you will need to replace it once it gets super torn up. I always keep a couple extra cheap sweatshirts and fleece blankets on hand for my rats. PART 4 - RAT NUTRITION You need to get the right food for rats. Also you need to make sure it's age appropriate. There are many types of rodent food to choose from. But just because it's good for a mouse or a guinea pig, does not mean it's good for a rat. They have a different metabolism than other rodents, and need a food that is specifically formulated for them. I feed my rats Oxbow pellets. The pellets you buy will be enough, but I highly recommend giving them fresh fruits and vegetables with the pellets. Nothing canned or cooked. Stay away from soft fruits and vegetables such as tomatoes and grapes, or citrus fruits. They need something they can crunch and chew. Carrots, lettuce, and cabbage are good choices for vegetables. Apples, watermelon, or cantaloupe would be good choices for fruits. You need to get them a food dish that is safe for them and that will hold enough food for them so that you don't have to refill it several times daily. They eat a lot, so be prepared to be spending a good amount of money on food. DO NOT EVER FEED THEM ONIONS OR ANYTHING CONTAINING ONION. ONIONS ARE LETHAL TO RATS WITHIN MINUTES. Also be aware that you can over feed your rats. Over feeding can cause a lot of problems. Obesity, diabetes, and breathing problems just to name a few. So watch how much you feed them, and make sure they have a balanced diet. You need to get water bottles that will survive their chewing. Plastic will have to be replaced regularly, unless they can be mounted on the outside of their cage. You can buy glass chew proof bottles. They are a few dollars more expensive, but will save you a lot of money in the long run. If you go with smaller bottles you will need at least one bottle per rat. If you go with larger bottles you won't need quite as many. For example I have 4 rats. With large bottles, I would need 2. For larger numbers dividing by 2 would be a bit impractical. For example if you had 10 rats, 5 bottles would be a bit overkill. You will need to wash their food dish at least once every few days. Rats don't try to aim any specific direction when they have to go, unless they're marking territory. So they will go in their food dish. PART 5 - CAGE MAINTENANCE When you clean their cage, don't just scoop the bedding out and put new bedding in. You have to get all the feces out, and wash not only the bottom, but the sides with soap and water. When rats pee, they tend to spray. This is how they mark their territory, the same as dogs. You will have it on every surface in your rats cage if you're using an aquarium. After washing it you need to make sure you get all the soap cleaned out of the cage before you replace the bedding and put the rats back in. Soap residue can make them sick if they lick it up. And scented soaps can be attractive to them. Don't use cleaners such as Windex or Pledge. Just use simple soap and water. If you're using an aquarium, you need to check it periodically to make sure there are no breaks in it. If it gets cracked it will need to be replaced. They can easily crack it further which will allow them to have a way out, and also hurt themselves on the broken glass at the same time. If you want, you can get a small heating pad to put under the cage. A small one would be enough. You don't want anything big, or extremely powerful, as if it's too hot, they can burn their feet. So I would recommend against it, but if it has a low heat setting that is VERY lukewarm, you can try it. Just remember to keep a close watch if you do. PART 6 - RAT HEALTH AND LONGEVITY Rats are very clean animals. If you watch them you will see them cleaning themselves quite a bit. But rats can also carry a lot of health problems if they're not cared for properly. They can have organ problems, bone problems, respiratory problems, or emotional problems. The symptoms range from small things such as mood changes, to self harm, to violence toward you and other rats. You just need to keep an eye on them to make sure everything is going good for them. You need to keep not only their cage clean but the area around them. Remember germs can jump. Rats don't have the lifespan of animals such as dogs who live to on average 12-15 years. Rats typically live between 2-3 years depending on the breed. So technically they don't live long, but they love hard. PART 7 - MISCELLANEOUS Contrary to what many will tell you, rats are very high maintenance. Their home has to be cleaned regularly, their food has to be specifically for rats, their water has to be clean, their home has to be sufficiently supplied for them to maintain their mental health, they have to be kept out of stressful situations, and above all they have to be loved. If you get rats and then lose interest in them, then that is cruel to them, because they will no longer be taken care of properly. You have to give them attention and love. Just because they live in a cage or aquarium doesn't mean they don't need you. It will hurt when you lose them, the same as any of your other companions. But your life will be that much richer for having had them. They will always love you if you love them.

Magic Carpet 2 (DOS PC). EA was EA long before most of us knew it. This is truly a gem of a game, but playing it was like siting on ticking bomb with no timer. You knew it was going to blow, but the trigger could be anything from your toenails growing one billionth of an inch to a massive earthquake, then it would crash. You were afraid to sneeze playing this game. 25 years later, and it's still just as busted.

(Apologies in advance for what is a shieldwall of text. This is a topic I'm very passionate about. Skip to the bit in bold for a briefer version) I think a lot of discussion about reviews falls into the trap of the "Just-World Fallacy", where in a just world reviewers: Are given enough time to play a game to fully and confidently write their thoughts to a word count Are using a universal scoring system that can be unanimously be agreed upon as being "just right" (for instance, I hate out-of-10/100 scores including decimal points) Are having their reviews scored by an editor with consistent standards and transparent reviews criteria Are all going to make the same amount of money from a "First Impression" or "Review-in-Progress" versus a "Review" of varying degrees of completion In the case of Cyberpunk 2077, reviewers had to work with the following: Two days before reviews could begin to be released. PC-only copies given to outlets with high end hardware A version of the game with a vague description of what its "Day Zero" patch entails, and no comments on what else will come in the "Day One" patch. Only being allowed to use pre-existing marketing materials lest they have future early review copies (and presumably ads) pulled. So while I don't think Kallie Plagge's review was particularly good because of the vaguery (focussing on what she felt rather than the object of her feelings), I can't put the entire fault at her feet when she's got 2 days to figure it all out. While her review could technically wait until it was more substantial, the rest of the games industry won't. That's where the above fallacy comes in to play. If Gamespot had delayed, their readers (and ad revenue) will find someone else who has reviewed it. It only takes one outlet/reviewer to have their thoughts up online to vacuum up all that monetisation and future readership. I think of this dilemma as a similar scenario to worldwide nuclear disarmament, though video games obviously aren't as important - everyone agrees that nukes are bad, but no country wants to be the first to disarm theirs because that makes them an easy target for invasion or being blown up themselves, assuming they have anything worth exploiting in the first place (my country's greatest export, for example, is fish 'n' chips and crippling misery, so to any tinpot dictator I say "come and have a go if you think you're hard enough"). Likewise, everyone agrees that reviews should be done with as much knowledge and experience as possible, but no outlet wants to be in second place in releasing reviews. To quote Tallageda Nights, "if you ain't first, you're last." --THAT BIT IN BOLD YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP TO BELOW-- But let's say for the sake of argument reviewers are given about a week or two to review a game, which judging by CP2077's length and breadth, is enough time to have some solid ideas on what it is and isn't, do they need to complete it? Yes and no. Antoine de Saint-Exupery is quoted as saying "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." This applies to all kinds of fields of work, but literature especially. A review isn't finished when the game's 100% completed. A review's finished when the reader has no questions left at the end. I didn't need to play The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics to completion to know it wasn't going to get any better, because I've played tactical RPGs long enough to recognise what I like and don't like about their fundamental mechanics. New Game+ wasn't going to make it any more palletable, and even if it did it wasn't worth suffering 15+ hours of dire gameplay to get there, but I still did because I wanted to maintain my integrity and--, OK, it was because I had nothing else better to do. I'd even go as far as arguing that by completing a game one's thoughts of it may worsen. I hated God of War (2018) by the end of it not because it's mechanically or artistically bad, but I was loathe to pick it up after every session because it desperately needed curating/editing (ironic given the mess my post is turning out to be). To be bluntly honest, I think whatever it achieves is wasted as a video game and knowing what I do about it now, I'd sooner and gleefully see a TV show or movie about it. Bearing in mind that I don't have the stress that Kaillie Plagg does as Gamespot's Reviews Editor, looking at reviews day in, day out without playing much of the game themself to verify. I review a handful of games a month and write the odd editorial, and I'm practically my own boss - barring the spell-checking, code of conduct, scoring and general chat with my editor, I'm free to publish whatever I want whenever I want. I'm free of a lot of the stress and burnout that comes from full-time games journalism, and grateful there's not any freelancers in my area who want to take my corner. --THE END OF THAT BIT IN BOLD YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP TO ABOVE-- So, in case the above waffled too much about the industry itself rather than practices (again, apologies for the passion. It's exciting to be part of a new forum!), here's the TL;DR: a reviewer should be given time by studios, publishers and editors to fully articulate their thoughts as accurately as they possibly can, whether or not they complete the game. I think reviewers should see all of the game and tinker with it enough to confidently speak on the subject, but there's sadly too much should and not enough shall. Thank you for reading if you made it this far! xD

@m76 My finding of this site was exactly the same as yours. I just wanted to find another gaming forum to be a part of and.... here I, or rather we, are!

Even though I learned a great deal about World War 2 through books and documentaries, a part of that information also came from games like Medal Of Honor where they actually took elements from interviews with surviving WW2 vets and incorporated it into the game. It's a shame that EA didn't see the goldmine they were sitting on although the next Medal Of Honor game will have actual interviews with some of those people.

When I was a kid, I used to be really into art and I used to draw Gray Fox and Solid Snake from the original Metal Gear Solid. I remember even did a drawing of Metal Gear Rex. To be honest, I'm not sure where I'd find that.

AC Odyssey has a whole in depth learning experience in its options menu where you go to actual historical locations and tour it moving your character around and so on. And while in the actual gameplay historical sights you come across are noted and you get XP points. And it has a brief summary of it in the map. I thought that was very unique. Some of it has to do with politics because Greece was the beginning of democracy and so there is a lot of history there as well as the olympics which they reveal as well.

I don't care about their personality. I just think they are ugly. No offence but to me they look like rats on steroids. Scary.

Pitbulls are also used as a scapegoat. 99% of all dog attacks are mutts that only ahe a physical characteristic that looks like one of the characteristics of a pitbull. Like head shape, or should width, or something else. For that reason alone, they’re called a pitbull by the stupid and the ignorant. Pitbulls are in actual fact very gentle dogs by nature. Sure, there’s a bad apple in every barrel, but it’s rare. 15 years ago it was Rottweillers. 20 years ago it was German Shepherds. 30 years ago it was Dobermans. What’s next? Yorkies? Beagles? Blue Heelers? I can tell you right now that my chihuahuas are a hell of a lot meaner than any pitbull. And they are all bark, and no bite. Hell, my bird is meaner than a pitbull. But then, she doesn’t like anyone who isn’t me. She will attack anyone who tries to handle her (except me) and her damn beak is SHARP. She loves to groom me, but ended up ripping my toe open a couple days ago.

I think one of the things that triggered this situation with Cyberpunk 2077 is the amount of outlandish promises CDPR made up to the release and how the game would be "released when ready". The media also is a contributing factor as they have wanted the game to fail before it even launched with all their fake stories and CDPR handed them the ammunition by releasing an unfinished, buggy product. The third factor is that CDPR releases great games (Cyberpunk despite all its bugs, is a great game with lots of customization in terms of playing style as well as story) without bugs so I feel like some people feel really betrayed by them (I can't disagree). If it was EA, nobody would be surprised because they always release buggy unfinished messes so the bar is set quite low for them. CDPR adheres to a higher standard so people are holding them to it. I agree with you and one of the ways CDPR could have taken advantage of this is pull a Bethesda - what do I mean by that? Let the modding community have access to things like the Creation Kit so that they can mod Cyberpunk 2077 and they'd iron out most of those bugs. Fallout 4, Oblivion, and Skyrim are primary examples of this. Without the modding community, these games would be decent at best but the modding community are the ones that made these games become as famous and revered as they are. Ironically, Dragon Age: Inquisition is also another example of this - I know it's EA but this is a similar situation. I'm not saying CDPR isn't supposed to fix the game but by giving the modding community a bit of leeway with Cyberpunk 2077, they could easily bounce back from this.

It's as if people find a bone to chew on from time to time. I don't know what triggers them, anticipation perhaps. It's not that these games are significantly worse than others, it's that people have unrealistic expectations. Mass Effect Andromeda got the same treatment, and I think it was a fine game. Dragon Age inqusition was similarly broken at release yet nobody called it out, it generally was well recieved. Or Fallout New Vegas was a broken mess as well, yet it is still adored and referenced as one of the greatest RPGs

The only problem there, is that we would need to get millions of gamers on board with boycotting the games, which is a near impossible thing to do. The 10k members here at this forum wouldn't really make a noticeable impact if we all banded together to do a boycott. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for sending a message that we're sick of the bullshit and halfassed unfinished games. I'll be right there on the front line in my wheelchair to tell them to cut the shit, not cut the games. Gaming companies lost their integrity somewhere in the 1990's.

Contact your local hospital and see if the children's ward has any need for it. You could sell it locally or you could donate it to any place that will take it. You could also sell it on eBay or similar. Or just give it away to someone who wants it. I know that you want them to go to someone who will appreciate it, but recycling is also an option if you're not finding anything else you want to do with it that would at least let some of the raw materials go back to be used by people who will appreciate the new items made from the finite resources that can be salvaged from it.

You might not believe it, but I have these in my country, right at my school kiosk. Yeah... my school...

Saving Private Hymen Oh s##T! Think I'm taking this too far.

Breast of the Wild

Yep, that's Fartcry 4

Swallow of Mordor

I'm going up the ante by changing not one word, but one letter. Mario Fart

I have found this site through this article. I don't think it is a particularly great article, but it listed some sites I didn't know of. And this was the most promising so I joined.