Cogs can think.

So, I thought I’d give Grand Theft Auto 4 another go after I tore it apart in my review. And you know what?

The game is still a fcuking piece of shit. I have NO fucking idea why the press gave this game so much acclaim.

The missions are all strictly linear, without deviation. This means that the world gets “reset” as soon as you start a mission. This may seem insignificant, but it makes GTA4 nothing more than a stricly linear progression of missions where you are nothing more than a string puppet.

In Saints Row 2 (A MUCH BETTER GAME), missions are not linear. In Saints Row 2, you can be clever. In games like this, you can bet your sweet ass that a simple objective like “kill guy Abc in building Xyz” will end in him escaping the building and driving off, where you have to follow him. I hate sequences like that, so I get clever and use my Latin/Greek-school educated überbrain: in Saints Row 2, I usually parked stolen cars in front of all the exits before the mission started, blocking the thugs from escaping. This way, I could kill them inside, and not be forced into stupid car chase sequences.

In GTA4, by contrast, you sure can park cars in front of all the escape routes, but because everything gets reset to a prescripted setup as soon as you start the mission, it’s all for naught. You are forced to play the mission in exactly the way as the guys at Rockstar set out for you - to the fucking letter. Deviation is not possible.

So, while GTA4 might give you the illusion of being in a sandbox, the sandbox is nothing more but a glorified mission hub where you play a few strings of strictly linear missions where player ingenuity is not welcome. My überbrain gets to hop up and down impatiently, brimming with ideas of more clever ways to finish a mission, but GTA4, the mother of all sandbox crime games, just won’t fcuking let me.

The linearity of missions pokes through in an even more fcuked up way too. I’m currently trying to complete a mission where some guy is holed up with a whole bunch of his lackies. His lackies are easy to kill, but at the end, he escapes the building (HOW FCUKING UNEXPECTED OF YOU, GTA4), and hops into a boat, where you have to follow him on a bike. When I started the mission for the first time, I noticed the boat and realised he’d use it to escape, so against my better judgement, I decided to move the boat into the middle of the ocean, and destroy it. Pointless, of course, as the boat magically reappeared when the bad guy got there.

Anyway, when he gets on the boat, you are supposed to jump on a motorbike and follow him along the coastline. Another linearity limitation: you must follow the exact path as set out by Rockstar. Any deviation from the bike path set out by Rockstar will make you fail the mission. After trying this for the umpteenth bazzilionth time, I got pissed off, and decided to get him before he could enter the boat.

At one point during the chase, he jumps off a building. So, I jump too, and aim to land directly on top of him. He falls down, I get up and think: I got you now you sorry fcuk. I was already waving the flag, but I was too early. As it turns out, you are not allowed to kill him yet. He was invincible. I emptied my entire machine gun on him, but he wouldn’t die. He can’t die. The guys at Rockstar do not want you to be clever or good at the game - they want you to do the fcuking impossible motorbike chase.

And then you fail the mission for the 398573495730495872349075349796760158734674363426th time, and you have to start the entire 20 minute mission all over again because the guys at Rockstar were too busy coming up with ways to make your cousin Roman AS FCUKING ANNOYING AS POSSIBLE to still have time to implement a fcuking CHECKPOINT SYSTEM. On top of that, the bad guys all magically respawn, but your own used ammo and health does not. Meaning my bank account is now empty, so I can’t restock on ammo and health, and there are no other missions currently available to earn any money.

These issues come on top of all the problems I already touched in the review. GTA4 is an utter and total piece of shit - sure, a pretty piece of shit with sparkly diamonds and realistic lighting effects - but a piece of shit still. People are so busy jerking off to the graphics that they forget that the gameplay is so utterly constrained, broken, and idiotic.

Grand Theft Auto 4 is still one of the worst games I’ve ever played. Then again, I’m the idiot here, and Rockstar is laughing its ass all the way to the bank - I paid 64 EUR for this shit.

BioWare talks about Mass Effect 2; Mass Effect 1 was probably my most intense video game experience ever.

Fiona Shepard is ready for the story to continue. BioWare, take your time with ME2. It should be perfect.

I spent my initial months in Amsterdam under the impression that I was living in a quasi-socialistic system, built upon ideas that originated in the brains of Marx and Engels. This was one of the puzzling features of the Netherlands. It is and has long been a highly capitalistic country — the Dutch pioneered the multinational corporation and advanced the concept of shares of stock, and last year the country was the third-largest investor in U.S. businesses — and yet it has what I had been led to believe was a vast, socialistic welfare state. How can these polar-opposite value systems coexist?

[…]

There is another historical base to the Dutch social-welfare system, which curiously has been overlooked by American conservatives in their insistence on seeing such a system as a threat to their values. It is rooted in religion. “These were deeply religious people, who had a real commitment to looking after the poor,” Mak said of his ancestors. “They built orphanages and hospitals. The churches had a system of relief, which eventually was taken over by the state. So Americans should get over ‘socialism.’ This system developed not after Karl Marx, but after Martin Luther and Francis of Assisi.”

The best article I have EVER read about my own country - and it’s written by an American living in Amsterdam. If you ever want to get a good idea of how a modern welfare state has NOTHING to do with “socialism”, this is it.

REALITY CHECK.

Hundreds of thousands of people die because of normal, regular influenza every year.

There have been 8 confirmed deaths because of swine flu.

Conclusion: we are all acting like a bunch of fcuking retards.

Today, my house got broken into. My brand new laptop was stolen, along with my flatscreen TV, digital camera, external hard drive and some clothes. Wanting to drown my sorrows in the Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream in the freezer, I opened the door to find that it too had been stolen. FML.

I love that website.

I’m no longer much of a football fan - I used to be, but I lost interest in the sport right around the time I developed my brain and realised just how much of a sham it all is. And it doesn’t have brooms.

Still, that doesn’t make it any less insanely cool that the club from what is basically my hometown Alkmaar (born, but not raised, did spend most of my teen years there, and my high school is there) is now the national champion - AZ Alkmaar has won the Dutch Premier League championship, breaking the endless hegemony of the “big three”, Ajax, Feyenoord, and PSV Eindhoven. Before this season, AZ was also the last to break that hegemony, in 1981.

AZ is only a very small club, which makes it all the more impressive. I’m very happy for them, as well as all their fans. Congratulations!

As I was strolling through big city Alkmaar today, buying music and video games, I spotted two young girls holding hands, being all lesbian.

I immediately conjured up images of them overcoming fear and prejudice, and the confusion about their sexuality, only to find each other and living happily ever after. They were so cute together.

I wanted to hug them, pet them, throw balls of yarn at them, but figured that would probably be fround upon.

In the new Resident Evil game, number 5 already, zombies can use guns.

That’s what we call an epic zombie fail. A zombie that can wield weapons is just a normal man with a dirty face.

You’d think that by now people know how to make a zombie. A zombie game isn’t difficult because of gunfire, a zombie game is difficult because there are ten billion million of them all coming your way. That’s why Left 4 Dead is such a great game.

Massive school shooting in Germany this week.

What did the shooter use? Ah yes, his dad’s legal weapons.

To everyone who is pro-killing pro-gun ownership: you are totally, totally right. Guns should be legal, so that this never happens again.