Jade Empire: Special Edition currently 60% off on GOG.com

I've talked more than a little about Planescape: Torment and how I think it's the best old-school BioWare-style game that wasn't actually made by BioWare (and better than the ones that were made by BioWare)... well, now I'm going to mention what I think is the best old-school BioWare-style game that actually was made by BioWare: Jade Empire.

Okay, so Jade Empire isn't as "old-school" as Planescape: Torment is, given that the combat is more an action-oriented beat-'em-up style instead of the pseudo-real-time turn-based combat of their previous games, and the graphics are 3D models rather than sprites, but that didn't bother me at all. The thing I like most about it, though, is that the story is just as good as, perhaps even better than, their previous games such as Baldur's Gate and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (the latter of which was my previous "favorite BioWare-style game that was made by BioWare," until Jade Empire came along and bumped it off), and the fact that it was near to the last game of theirs to use the old-school dialog trees (the actual last being Dragon Age: Origins), as opposed to the dumbed down dialog wheel that was introduced in the Mass Effect series and carried over into Dragon Age II. Anyway, overall, it's a BioWare game set in a mythical country inspired by ancient Imperial China, and it was made back when BioWare games were still amazing and weren't the EA-tainted shit they are today. If that sounds even a little bit good to you, I'd highly recommend checking it out.

And it's currently on sale on GOG.com, along with a bunch of other EA games. (The fact that I have to refer to Jade Empire as "an EA game" now makes my gorge rise a little, but whatever. Rest assured, though, that Jade Empire doesn't have the EA-taint, since it was released well before BioWare became an undead husk back in 2007.)

"Minecraft Bukkit team lead tries to end development, but Mojang steps in"

I don't play much multiplayer Minecraft anymore (or singleplayer either, to be honest), so I'm not really familiar with Bukkit at all, but even so, I found this story to be somewhat interesting. It sounds like the dude who was currently in charge of Bukkit apparently got buttmad over the whole new EULA thing and tried to end the project, but then Mojang was like nope, we're going to continue it ourselves.

"The Truth About Video Game Journalism"

"It's been a strange week in video game land, particularly on the front of the unfortunate war between gaming fans and the gaming press, which is reaching new levels of insanity. All this week, every forum thread I read is decrying the state of the gaming press. My Twitter feed, conversely, full of gaming journalists, is decrying the state of the gaming public."

"All this week..." huh. Only that long? Yeah, this article is mostly about that thing I posted about the other day in which I have little interest, outside of the whole "cover-up conspiracy" angle of it that some are pushing. I find the rest of it, the whole feminism/feminism-is-bad/white knighting/social justice warriors/tumblr/etc. bullshit, to be exceedingly tedious, though, so I'm not even going to get into that at all.

I only have this to say concerning the subject of video game journalism in general: Video game journalism has been a joke, on the whole, for much, much longer than simply the breaking of this latest scandal. Video game journalism has pretty much been a joke for almost a decade now, perhaps two. This certainly isn't the first time that I've written a post about an article in which a video game journalist has felt the need to defend video game journalism and in which the author of said article went on a tirade against the "gaming public."[1] Probably won't be the last either. The mere fact that video game journalists are so often feeling the need to defend video game journalism itself says plenty enough about the state of video game journalism, at least to me anyway.

Rare are the occasions when video game journalists themselves admit and shine a light on how shitty video game journalism can be.

(EDIT) Also, say hello to my new video game journalism tag. I didn't realize that I'd written that many posts about this shit already (and there are probably more of them down in my archives that I haven't found yet). (/EDIT)

(EDIT 2) Also also, on a completely unrelated note, I hate Forbes's new layout, where all articles are appearing on the same scrolling page now, rather than having their own separate, dedicated pages. The comments don't show up until you click a separate thing now, rather than just being there by default as it used to be. Why, oh why, do Internet websites so often feel the need to "fix" what wasn't broken? (/EDIT 2)

[1] - That said, I do agree that many members of the "gaming public" are indeed actually just as bad as these video game journalists think they are, and that the "gaming community" as a whole is also kind of a great big fucking joke. There are definitely an imperial fuckton of misogynist, sexist, racist, homophobic, bigoted asshats out there, too true. I've ranted about similar issues before, with regard to gaming "news/blog" sites in particular, and I think this is at least a small part of the reason why video game journalism has gotten as bad as it has in the first place. However, I just don't think that the assholes are the majority of the gaming public who think that video game journalism is a joke, nor do I think pointing out those assholes in any way mitigates or validates how terrible video game journalism has become, or, perhaps, always was. (The important thing is that I've found a way to feel superior to both. ¬_¬)

"GameStop CEO Confident That Nintendo's Wii U Can Still Be A Hit"

I don't disagree with what these guys say (either the GameStop CEO or the author of the article). As soon as they release a proper Zelda and/or Metroid game, the Wii U will probably take off. Hell, just the next Smash Bros. game, which is not too far away, will probably be enough to make that happen. People (or at least me, anyway) buy Nintendo consoles for Nintendo games, and... that's pretty much it. Sure, there might the occasional non-Nintendo-made outlier here and there, but a Nintendo console is for Nintendo games these days. The only thing, for me at least, is that I'm just not as into Mario games as I used to be, but yeah, when Zelda or Metroid hit, that's when I'll move from ignoring the current gen consoles altogether to finally thinking about maybe getting a Wii U some day. I don't think Nintendo is too awfully hurt by not getting Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty, honestly. Anybody that really wanted to play those games probably already have a PS4 or X-bone anyway.