Mario Still Kicks Ass

I just noticed upon completing my last post, I forgot my header is actually of a video game.  Surprising that I associated enough importance to a video game to put it as my header on my blog.  Perhaps there’s more to this video-gaming thing and it’s sociological implications than I had thought. Maybe I’ll find out tonight in class with the guest lecturer on video games and sociology.

A Further look at Genre, Mode, and Milieu in Games.

So like the dense tool that I am, I totally forgot Paul mentioned the switch of the Porn and Video game classes. So instead of reiterating my same post from last week I’ll go on a slightly different direction, but still focusing on the criteria set out in Zach Whalen’s article.  I’m going to try and extrapolate as much out of the few Playstation 3 games that I have seen and possibly explain their mode, milieu, and genre. I apologize in advance for any incongruent or possibly erroneous statements I make.  I am not much of a gamer and don’t mean to offend those that are.

I got some further information on the games I have seen on an online gamers magazine/ review site. It iss one of the many sites that Whalen describes in his article.  The site is Gamespot.com 

The first game I have seen is Resistance: Fall of Man. I would have to say that the genre of this game is First person shooter.  When I compare it to the only other real first person shooter I have played and liked, Goldeneye for N64, I have to say this game is leaps and bounds above its ten year old predecessor.  The mode of this game is presented in a semi- RPG style game. It has a complex, yet simple to follow story line.  The Milieu of this game is definitely action.  Lots of gun-fire, explosions, and near death get-a-ways.

The second game, and only really other game I have seen, is MotorStorm.  It is an off the wall fast paced racing game. Totally crazy and fun for anyone to pick up.  The genre is obviously a racing game. I don’t know how else you would describe it.  You accomplish things in the game by winning, obviously. The Mode of the game is realistic, yet imaginative. The game play control is realistic yet the crashes are not.  These crashes make the game a lot of fun. You’re player can choose from motorbikes, quads, cars, and trucks.  When you crash on the bike you can see the guy go flying and break and bend in ways that incite “oooohhhs” like only great games  can.  The milieu of this game is “driving” according to Gamespot.  Seems fairly obvious.

Well that’s all I got for my own personal reviews, if you can all them that. I think this post was more of an exercise for myself to understand how games are organized into modes, genres, and milieus.  They are different than movie reviews and I think it’s important to understand the differences in interfaces between the two medias.

Split -Infinitives are the Devil.

So in reference to Paul’s question he posed in while discussing proper paper writing skills.  According to AskOxford – This is a split infinitive:

To boldly go where no man has gone before!

The infinitive is to go, and it has been ’split’ by the adverb boldly. Split infinitives have been the cause of much controversy among teachers and grammarians, but the notion that they are ungrammatical is simply a myth: in his famous book Modern English Usage, Henry Fowler listed them among ’superstitions’!

Split infinitives are frequently poor style, but they are not strictly bad grammar. In the example above, to avoid the split infinitive would result either in weakness (to go boldly) or over-formality (boldly to go): either would ruin the rhythmic force and rhetorical pattern of the original. It is probably good practice to avoid split infinitives in formal writing, but clumsy attempts to avoid them simply by shuffling adverbs about can create far worse sentences.