If the question is whether Magneto is a hero, anti-hero, or villain, the answer is..."Yes." He's not written very consistently, zipping wildly from a Malcolm X-esque militant fight for equal rights, to a separatist who just wants mutants to have their own space, to a neo-Nazi preaching about how the superior race should become dominant to the inferior humans. His primary rivals, the X-Men, react accordingly and talk him down, foil his plans non-aggressively, openly brawl with him in order to subdue his evil, or even get led by him in the absence of Prof X.

That's the unfortunate problem with a fictional character written by many people over the course of several decades, especially one who shows up at irregular intervals and is thus not able to be shown evolving slowly over time. The most consistent view you can have of Magneto is if you believe he's always teetering on the edge of full blown madness and current events in his life can tip him either toward or away from it.

Motion sensing won't be abandoned, but the controller will be heavily modified to be both more ergonomic and have a sleeker appearance, and to work more reliably and precisely. Buttons will be added, bringing the potential for traditionally controlled games to come to the system up, and a microphone for voicechat (although they'll probably retain draconian security measures nearly at the level of friend codes). If oil prices continue to soar and plastic is no longer relatively inexpensive, the gimmicky add-ons and controller shells will no longer be featured. If prices even out and such addons are fiscally viable, they'll remain. It probably won't look like a pair of dildos, but I'd be surprised if it weren't two pieces, connected remotely.

I doubt Nintendo would try mind-controlled gaming yet. Down the road, maybe, but I don't think the technology is there to produce a quality game. Moving simple objects in simple environments, sure, but not something as engaging as audiences want. They'll probably just refine the motion sensing instead of going crazy; heart-rate monitors and other biometrics are probably as far as Nintendo will reach.

Abandoning the "quest-chain" idea and giving you all the relevant quests at once would make leveling a much more appealing idea. The final reward "quest" from the chain could just as easily be tied to completing quest x AND y AND z as x THEN y THEN z.

Numerical scores exist to demonstrate the weight a particular reviewer places on the strengths and weaknesses of a game. Unless I place the exact same weight on the same assets, the score is worthless as far as determining whether I will like a game. Taken in aggregate on a site like Metareview, the scores cannot possibly mean ANYTHING USEFUL to ANYONE.

I disagree with the idea of a review as entertainment reflecting the game. I don't actually view reviews as a means of entertaining myself, but as a way of informing myself about the nature of a game I may consider buying. I don't ask for them to be anything but informative. If space is limited (as the article mentions), entertainment and eloquence should be cut. An informative list is worth more to me than an essay that fails to touch on points I, as the consumer, may want to know...

The thing people don't seem to understand is that Nintendo doesn't expect people to buy everything Mario. The games cover everything from fantastic platforming fighting games like Smash Bros. to pure platforming to racing games like Kart to sports game to puzzle games to RPGs. There are still a few genres that aren't covered, but (except for a small niche with extremely specialized tastes) almost every gamer can find something in the Mario series that appeals to them...and almost nobody can say they genuinely like everything.

If you want that sort of thing, go get it, and get it over with.

Oregon Trail taught me, sure, but not as much as something I wanted to do might have (or even a book). That I managed to get to Oregon on squirrel and bird meat alone is more a personal triumph than anything remotely educational.

Using games to teach isn't necessarily lazy teachers creating low-maintenance busywork, but thanks to draconian limitations placed on teachers by school boards, state standardizations, sue happy parents groups (and others), a lot of the more creative ways to present core concepts to children get shot down. I've gone toe to toe with parents and a minister to get them to allow a boy in a private reading tutoring program to read the sort of books he was interested in (wizards, dragons, magic), after the pastor's wife decided that any book with a spell in it was used by Satan to capture the souls of children. I think the only reason they finally allowed it was because I kept my mouth shut in front of the boy I was championing, and didn't pass judgement on the batshit-loco fundies in his earshot. With the restriction lifted, his tested reading level jumped five grade-levels to slightly above the recommendation for his age.

Getting kids interested in a subject is the best way to help them learn, which is why kids who regularly fail spelling and vocabulary tests can recite 95% of the pokedex. If those interests were always permissible tools for learning, teaching could be both more fun and more productive.

YOU DO NOT HOLD THE COPYRIGHT ON YOUR NAME. You cannot expect that everyone in the world is going to drop everything and contact all the people in the world who share their names before doing anything. If she's really that disturbed about someone in the world somewhere sharing her name and doing something she isn't, she can haul herself down to the courthouse and change her name to a random string of two sets of twelve numbers. Or she can just quit whining about inconsequential maybes and thank Facebook for its privacy options.

The hypothetical situation she describes, in which a person googles her name without ever meeting her for an interview and assumes that she can hula-hoop and that her pants might actually not be a permanent fixture, does not say that she looks like the marketing Lauren. She seems only to be suggesting that someone who doesn't know better might confuse the video's girl with the owner of the resume.

In any event, best of luck to the people who want it, congratulations to him who gets it (I, for one, welcome our new moderator overlord.). For those that don't, you can always drown your sorrows in warm apple pie.

If need be, they can go with someone tiny, someone of a different race, someone of a different gender, or even with a particularly emotive puppy. But if they can barely read their lines off the teleprompter they're staring at so intently one might think it were about to bite, Marvel should quickly pass.

Not a very practical use, but it would amuse me. For a while.

It seemed to take its biggest hit from critics because it spent too much time talking, and people went into the theatre thinking it was going to be a high-octane action film mostly about a giant green man smashing everything. For the first time I can remember, critics demanded more explosions in a movie.

I didn't mind the daddy issues plot of HULK, it reflected Hulk's solo comic character fairly well, but I'd have rather seen the Hulk as he's portrayed in group comics. When Hulk's alone, he's portrayed as a sympathetic hero persecuted by the government and at constant war with his more primal urges; the Hulk here is seen more like a toddler, with selfish desires unbalanced by learned social graces and prone to temper tantrums who fights not so much randomly as when provoked. In a group, he's usually got the same pathos while he's Banner, but with the added impact of a monstrous Hulk who's capable of murder and mass destruction and directionless rage. The group Hulk has inhuman motivations that differ completely from those of his Human alter ego, and it's more a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde struggle than the struggle between a man's id and super-ego.

If this Hulk, obviously based on the sympathetic solo comics, is actually one of the movies leading up to the Avengers, it will be interesting to see how Marvel plans on dealing with the dual portrayals of the character as the softer Hulk they've thus far used in the movies differs from the more problematic Hulk that's more comic accurate in the Avengers.

Even if it were a product of rising oceans due to atmospheric change based on the release of greenhouse gasses by developing industry, a full stop to all such industry would still likely not halt the process if it's already at the point where you fear for your island. Slamming on the brakes for a process that large isn't going to immediately stop it, and stopping industry is more akin to taking the foot off the gas than slamming on the brakes. There may be incredibly valid reasons for a reform of pollution laws and penalties, but saving the atoll isn't likely one of them.

I feel for their plight, and they need new homes regardless of the reason. I'd hope that people at the conference didn't just flip them the bird, and that there are people offering them aid.

In all honesty, while I might have seen The Spirit sight unseen, the trailers have pretty much disabused me of that. I have no interest in seeing it now.

As to the quality of the movie posters: Who cares? The only place you see movie posters is at the theater, and I like to think that people aren't really using a static image they're exposed to once to plan out their movie-going future with so many better resources available.

I'll bet that place is CRAWLING in cats.

Of course, it makes no sense for transformers to have gender assignments, since they weren't created to work with people in the first place.

With Vader and Yoda, tapping into what is probably the biggest geek community, I have to wonder why Namco's trying so hard to get people in with fanservice if the game could stand on its own. As a rule, I avoid anything that's trying too hard to get me to buy it.

Of course, even less than homocidal leaders in Africa have made poor calls in terms of keeping their people fed; Zambia passed a ban on genetically modified food in 2002 (based on urgings by Greenpeace to consider such foods, the majority of the food grown in the US and consumed by American citizens, as poison and experimental) that wasn't lifted until 2005.

@promethean_spark: You can't stop providing surplus until the infrastructure is already built. Suddenly stopping charitable donations would only "help" in the sense that most of the population would die and what's left might be able to live off the land. Farms don't instantly create food, it takes preparation. An African farm, with dry conditions necessitating ample irrigation and poor soil quality necessitating conditioning the soil, it could be years between the time a farm is considered and the time it produces its first food. And that's not even considering that in the poorest regions of Africa, the people are in no condition to put in the demanding physical labor that farming requires, or that farm equipment isn't as readily available in the areas that need it. You can't jolt Africans into farming, even if they're potentially able to farm.

And the big problem you have with movie is that one of the writers may suck?

Sorry, bad premise trumps bad writing for me.

Of course, I wasn't aware that the writing on Eli Stone was done by a consistent set of writers. The quality of the show swung all over the place, and the plots were anywhere from incredibly trite to actually surprising. I assumed that several teams of writers were each doing an episode or two apiece.

Anyway, I think they'd be better off staying away from Iron Man's more mystical enemies. That said, I can't think of any of Iron Man's enemies besides The Madarin, Fing Fang Foom, and his own armor...

I assume that the way this study worked is that it pulled a hundred people off the street, split them into two groups. One group took a poll immediately, asking them to rate their responce to certain statements (like "Adidas is the only brand for me" and "Adidas is an inspirational brand", for instance). The other group was asked to play certain games for a few minutes and then take similar polls (or the same poll after all the gaming finished). The group that hadn't just come across the advertising was much less likely to recognize the slogan on the ad they never got to see, so the group that did see the ad was able to confidently recognize the slogan.

It's not a scientific study, it's market research (which is ALWAYS of suspect nature).

That said, I don't mind in-game advertising if it somehow helps me out. Television is free because of advertising. Websites are free because of advertising. If there's no price drop because of it in games, if developers are pocketing the extra money to no extra benefit for the consumer, then I can't embrace in game ads.

I hope they revive Base Wars, I used to love that game. Only make it an over the shoulder shooter. And lose the baseball element altogether in favor of a capture the flag element. And nobody likes robots anymore, but if you replace them with hot, scantily clad women with magic powers it might sell better. Base Wars 2: Skateboarding.

As long as it avoids bright colors it gets to be called mature. If it has good gameplay but moves away from the brown/grey/shadowy color scheme, it's a kiddy game.

I only get upset when movies forget their own rules.

I don't mean to imply the game is bad, Capcom pretty consistently does improve with every sequel they release so you can expect it to be good...just not all that different. Something to buy instead of earlier games, not in addition to.