PixlBit

Hmm, I think we using Drifting, Samus' Stardrive (fitting, I'd say), and something else from his second album. I'm bad with song names...

Andy Mckee is the man. Fun fact: we use a few of his tracks for the open, close, and break music in PixlTalk.

Her opinion seems pretty damaging to women. I know Chessa would certainly take issue with the sentiment that games should be made easier for women. Perhaps the women who aren't already into games aren't into them for other reasons. Things like, I don't know, societal norms, differing tastes, lack of exposure, or any other number of reasons. I really hate all of these "activists" that paint a group with such a wide brush.

I know this is going to sound weird, but I almost hope we don't see DLC. If we do, I really hope that it's a bundle of content and they wait to release it after the game has been out for a year or more. You know, something to reignite interest in it after the game cools?

I'd be seriously concerned that if they go to the DLC model, we get nickel and dimed on each and every character/stage, similar to what we've seen with some of Nintendo's other games with DLC.

Haha, alright. I'll definitely work that into a future update. Hopefully shouldn't be too bad, though I'm not sure exactly when I'll be able to get to it. We're about to kick off a very big development effort for brand new community functions.

If it helps any, you can always trace back PMs you sent out here. I know it's not the perfect solution for right now, but hopefully it gives you some context for reponses you receive.

I played some of this last night (finally) and I couldn't agree more Julian. Literally point for point, your review rings true for me. The stealth is pretty shoddy, the violence is needlessly over the top, and the whole thing was just generally offputting for me. I'm honestly still baffled at how this has garnered so much praise.

Not anymore!

Aggressive Inline... yeah, I know, super obscure. With the Xbox version you can play songs off your HDD, so I enjoy jamming out to some tunes from my library and just going nuts doing tricks and racking up huge scores almost subconsciously. It's oddly zen.

This is one of those very touchy subjects that seem to be quite hard to discuss without offending someone. I think it's hard for some people to discuss something reasonably that sits very close to their heart/their core belief structure.

I grew up Catholic, went to church every Sunday, and I was even an altar boy along with my brother for a couple years. Not sure if I chose to do the altar boy gig because I was really religious or because I found it slightly more tolerable/engaging than just sitting there idly for more than an hour every week.

Anyhow, as I went into High School and started critically thinking about some of the stuff that was taught, I really started to question my belief structure and what was important in life. By the time I hit college, I had completely walked away from Catholicism. There was too much dissonance in there, too much that didn't mesh up logically. How can God be all-loving but condemn certain groups of people that he supposedly created in his image? Something about that just didn't make too much sense to me.

My then girlfriend, now wife, Chessa, also felt very similarly. Needless to say, we haven't baptized either of our children and believe me when I say that caused quite the commotion in both of our families. We've calmly explained our viewpoints and why we perceive it to be damaging to the development of our children. We both have a strong moral compass and would rather use that to direct our children than the vague (mis)interpretation of the Bible used by many priests and other holy folk that govern the church.

Of course, after our systemic rejection of every possible point they could come up with to convince us to raise our children in the church, they laid down the original sin line. As horrible as I think religion can be at times, I don't think there's much worse than the concept of original sin. If such a thing as heaven or hell exists, I can't imagine that one of my boys would be condemned to it for simply not being baptized. The fearmongering that backs that thought is horrendous. Babies are helpless and harmless. To argue that the ones that are taken prematurely are sent to hell for not being baptized is beyond awful.

In any event, we eventually got over the hurdle with our families, but it's still a sore spot when it does come up. While I'm pretty firmly in the atheist category, Chessa is more of an agnostic. I think if we dissipate all of the noise around the bible and take a look at the core teachings of Jesus, whether he be man or god, we're left with something valuable.

He preached love for your fellow man and taking care of those around you. That's some righteous stuff and something I can definitely get behind. Sometimes I find it sad that so much hatred and negativity accompanies Christianity. I think there's something valuable buried within it, but it's been polluted by a lot of garbage and sensationalism over the years.

I personally enjoy message boards, and truth be told, PixlBit is mostly born from one. I got into writing about games at the Planet GameCube (now Nintendo World Report) forums. This eventually resulted in me applying for a staff position there, which in turn inspired me to strike out on my own and make my own website.

I say live and let live. If people want to obsess over celebrities, go for it. I don't personally get it, but if it makes them happy, who am I to judge? I enjoy lots of things they likely perceive to be worthless, so what makes my hobbies/interests any better or more fulfilling?