Christoforge Column: Trump, Brexit, and World Cups

Trump Visits The UK

Prime Minister Theresa May may not be the most popular politician in the country, but one man in America makes her look like a hero of the people. That particular man recently decided to visit the UK, and not surprisingly pissed off a few people in the process. I would love to know how many of those protesting a single man entering the country also advocate for open borders, but that's beside the point. Donald Trump is such a villain to the UK populace that hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets in cities all over the country any time he even dares take a step near our borders. The most recent protests in London had an amusing centerpiece depicting an infant Trump stuck onto a balloon flying above Parliament Square. That's classic British humour, although in truth the final piece was a bit pathetic. Sure, I enjoy berating every foreign visitor to the country as much as anyone, especially when they're a bit of a prick, but is this really the best protestors could come up with? I saw more effort put into individual signs than this balloon costing five grand. I don't know what fucking moron decided to phone up the cowboy builders, but for over five grand I was expecting a whole fucking airship. You might hire that balloon for a fancy dress party as decoration, not put it on display at a national protest. The worst part is the Mayor of London signed for this shit. Come on Sadiq Khan, you're the mayor, put some fucking effort into making your city look great. At the moment you've got surging knife crime rates over the whole city, so if there was ever a time to impress people it would be now.

I understand Donald Trump is not exactly a popular man in Britain for reasons that are mostly justified, but I don't follow the view that we should ban him from visiting this country. At this critical moment in our political history, where we're severing ties with key allies, is it really wise to be effectively flipping the bird to the most powerful man on the planet? If there's one quality that Trump has it's that he's not going to fluster over half-assed decisions, so pissing him off is hardly going to end in a similar awkward relationship that Theresa May has with the European Union. It pains me that Great Britain now has to side with a man who claimed we could, and should, sue the EU, but this is the political climate we live in today, and Britain is as vulnerable today as it ever has been. Let's stop burning bridges quicker than we can build them.


A Quick Word on Brexit

Whilst we're dabbling in the subject of Brexit I thought I'd give a quick update for you all. It's totally fucked. It's always been a complete farce, and now the main proponents are dropping like flies. Maybe it was a good thing these individuals resigned from these top positions, but it hardly makes this farcical political position look any better.


The French Winning at Something

It may have come to your attention that there was a minor football tournament held in Russia over the last month. The most important part of that tournament was, of course, the English football team not embarrassing themselves in their usual pathetic way, but there were also a lot of other stories that nobody could have ever predicted. We were treated to stories like the unfancied Russian side getting past the Spanish side to reach the quarter-finals, or the German side crashing out to South Korea in the group stages. In the end the French football team finally fulfilled their massive potential and won a major tournament. Comisserations to runners-up Croatia, who gave spirited and well-organised performances in almost every single one of their games. France were consistently the best team in the tournament, so Croatia can have little regrets with their losing efforts against such a prolific footballing powerhouse. As a Brit I hate having to congratulate France, but whilst many have joined in my show of support there are other hopping on the bandwagon and using this triumph to support their political views.

A notable example of this behaviour came from South African comedian Trevor Noah, who in a celebratory fashion claimed that Africa, and not France, had won The World Cup. I'm aware this is a joke, but that doesn't excuse the idiocy on display. In case you weren't aware 21 of the 23 players in that French squad were born in France, and not a single African side made it out the group stages, so I don't quite understand how you could possibly claim this whole continent won this international tournament. Certainly many French players are from African heritage, but these players are representing France, and not the countries of their ancestors. This joke also completely ignores the idea that football is a team sport. If this French squad were an African team then they would be missing players such as Antoine Griezmann and Hugo Lloris, and so you seriously have to wonder whether they would have triumped without these critical figures.

The idea that the French team are predominantly African is such a strange line of argument as well. It's almost as if these idiots are trying to delegitimise these black players from being French citizens, which if I'm not mistaken is a line I would expect from a far-right neo-nazi group. In fact it's very similar reasoning to the British extremist idiots over at the BNP, who like to think that being black excludes you from being British. That attitude would rightly get 'woke comedians' like Trevor Noah jumping all over it, yet here's Noah condescendingly parading his race-based politics to suck all the celebrations out of the French victory. Is the message behind this joke that immigrants can't be considered true citizens of a new country even after multiple generations? That's what it sounds like to me. Maybe it's time for people like Trevor Noah to stop shoehorning political issues in America into every single event on the planet, and have some fucking respect for the achievements of those French players.

Morons of the Internet: Natalie Portman

This is the segment where I scour my favourite forums around the internet and find some particularly interesting articles about current affairs told in the words of my favourite human beings.

In this edition we return to our old friends at PETA, who as per usual are recruiting celebrities to try and indoctrinate people into their cult. I wonder what wonderful message PETA have got for us this time. What's that, we're directly comparing the slaughtering of animals to The Holocaust? Oh right, that's the sort of noble things I expect a charity should be doing.
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https://www.peta.org/features/video-natalie-portman-ode-to-isaac-bashevis-singer/
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In case I haven't made it clear yet, PETA isn't exactly my favourite organisation in the world, but I do like Natalie Portman. Not only would I like to sleep with her, which is a privilege any woman on Earth can relate to, but I've also enjoyed her performances over the years in films such as Leon and Black Swan. She's also something of an animal rights activist, and although I'm sure her heart is in the right place, she unfortunately sides with disgusting organisations like PETA. I've written at length about the scummy practices of PETA on this very blog, so I won't bore you with the details and instead focus on what idiotic actions they've settled on this time.

The video presented in this article shares opinions from a literary writer named Isaac Bashevis Singer, who in traditional PETA fashion is about as knowledgeable on animal rights as a cow heading to the slaughterhouse. He's presented as this hero of the masses, who challenged everything from women's rights to animal rights. A quick research returned nothing significant on whether this liberal campaigning is actually a reflection of the man, and there is a noticeable absence of anything relating to his campaigning over women's issues. If we're to believe PETA and Natalie Portman that these issues were a huge part of his life, surely these activities would be repeatedly mentioned across the web. However, I'm sure we can trust PETA as literary connoisseurs to know what they're talking about, and certainly not manipulating the works of Singer to blow smoke up their own assess. PETA continues to show why humility isn't a term they understand by claiming Singer was a predecessor to them pushing animal rights issues into the mainstream. I honestly can't imagine having my head so far up my own ass and claiming that my own charity revolutionised this whole animal rights debate when it's been raging for fucking centuries before PETA even existed, and is even persistent in religious practices thousands of years old. I'm struggling to think what PETA has actually done apart from repeatedly behaving like absolute cretins. Once again we have PETA simply massaging their own ego instead of actually acting in a beneficial way towards animals.

 Just because you've promoted farcical events like this into the mainstream doesn't give you an excuse to pat yourself on the back in the most arrogant way possible.

PETA behaving like idiots is nothing new, but here they've decided to attack meat eaters by comparing slaughterhouses to Nazi death camps. Merely comparing meat producing animals to the millions of Jews slaughtered by the Nazis is astonishingly ignorant. I'm amazed that as a woman from Jewish heritage Portman is able to throw this huge generalisation into such a serious argument without any care in the world. This is the story of your relatives being persecuted, yet here you are using it without a care to massage the ego of a bigoted charity. Not only does this argument create a reductionist view of animal welfare, but it also succeeds in trivialising the horrors that Jewish people have witnessed in the last century. Clearly anyone with a brain can see these are two completely separate issues that shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as each other. If you wish to make a point about the treatment that slaughtered animals go through then that's fine, but don't you fucking dare start comparing this system to the attempted extermination of a whole population for mere shock value. Unfortunately this isn't the first time PETA has pulled a senseless act like this one, and in fact they've quite rightly been banned from showing pictures of The Holocaust in Germany. Why the fuck you would ever consider shoving national tragedies into the faces of citizens in order to promote your cause is beyond me. It's just further evidence that PETA is an organisation run by scumbags.

What is abundantly clear is that neither Singer nor Portman are biologists, or have any background knowledge of global agricultural systems. To compare the suffering of animals to humans just simply isn't possible, so making rash generalisations only fuel shock value to a manipulative argument. What's even crazier is the idea that eating meat makes you a Nazi by proxy. It's all very well Portman and Singer proclaiming that slaughtering is at odds with human society, but for a significant number of people worldwide who live in abject poverty, this isn't a choice they can make. Does that make these people less human merely because they aren't able to make the dietary choices that these privileged individuals do? I find his reasoning contradicts PETA as well. Singer claims that if slaughtering persists there can be no liberty or harmony, yet PETA are more than happy to euthanise their own animals in large numbers, so why not compare them to Nazis? This idea also contradicts the words of Natalie Portman, who in a video linked by this very article claimed that all humans are free irrespective of their diet. It's almost as if she has no fucking clue what she's going on about.

Portman makes such shit arguments. The idea that we should all radically change our lifestyle because some writer who knows fuck all about animals has compared the suffering of Jews to the suffering of animals is ludicrous. You can't just worship the ground someone walks upon and encourage others to emulate their thoughts because you agree with them. In truth you could just as easily encourage people to follow animal rights campaigner Adolf Hitler. He wrote at length about the similarities between Jews and animals, so I look forward to Natalie Portman making a propaganda piece on him. It gets even more confusing when the PETA article starts instructing people to take inspiration from Natalie Portman, who as far as I'm concerned has merely talked about some writer in front of a camera. Does that now count as inspirational? I could just as easily film a piece where I praise Rudyard Kipling's imperialistic interpretation of the natural world, and then claim people should be inspired by me to start burning vast swathes of rainforest for human settlement. It's all very well presenting an idea, but where PETA always seem to struggle is in actually making a formal argument without just becoming provocateurs.

Really this whole charade is just a cheap advertisement rather than a serious topic of discussion, so maybe you could argue that my reaction is somewhat over the top. However, I'm pissed off, and sick of hearing this outrageous comparison that succeeds in nothing other than trivialising atrocities. It's clear in this piece that PETA have no compassion for victims of The Holocaust, they merely want to use victims as a bargaining chip for there provocative propaganda schemes. Just because they can use the untold suffering of millions as a comparison doesn't mean they should, and once again we're left with a shocking reminder of what these moronic campaigners will do for a bit of publicity.

Christoforge Reviews: Jurassic World Evolution

Oh boy have I been waiting to this review this game. Years ago a young dinosaur obsessed child dedicated years of his life to a video game in which you actively got to create your own version of Jurassic Park. That child was me, and to this day that game known as Operation Genesis is one I still treasure fondly. Just imagine my excitement when out of nowhere, many years later, it was announced there was to be a spiritual successor to this iconic title. Over the years I just grew to accept that a remake wasn't going to happen, and surely even now in this surreal moment there's not a chance this spiritual successor could ever attempt to fill the void of the legendary Operation Genesis. I hate to admit this, but times have changed, and so has my childhood ambition to build a Jurassic Park of my own. Nowadays I sneer at dodgy paleontology, and even grumble over some of the limited technical aspects that held back Operation Genesis. Evolution then, like it's audience, needs to have aptly evolved to suite a new breed of gamers rather than drawing prestige off of previous triumphs.

To understand what makes a Jurassic Park style park builder so awesome to play we need to take a brief look back at Operation Genesis. It's certainly not a game without its flaws, but nobody who ever played that masterpiece would ever admit so. This is because playing that game for hours was a fucking brilliant experience, and no matter whether you wanted a serious challenge from some missions, or just to build a park to lure visitors into being eaten by a newly released Spinosaurus, it was a game where hours went flying by. This is a mantra that those shitty Jurassic Park mobile games could never hope to achieve, so you can see the importance of what this new release means to dinosaur lovers like myself. Frontier were the guys tasked with making this hugely important title, and whilst I wasn't particularly amazed by their previous game Planet Coaster, I still have an infinite amount of respect for the developers behind Roller Coaster Tycoon, which is another childhood favorite. These guys know how to make park building feel epic, so all the ingredients behind a great game are in place.

Just like in the film series Evolution promises to be bigger and flashier than its predecessors. Mirroring the evolution of the fictional Jurassic Park this game will see you start from humble beginnings nursing harmless dinosaurs to creating Frankenstein like monsters to please your accountancy team. Your task is quite simple really. Build a park on five separate islands, each with their own challenges, whilst building your reputation and unlocking new content along the way. I don't actually like this progression system very much, and would rather there be a choice between a sandbox mode and following the missions. In my opinion this current system just stifles creativity, and instead of being allowed the keys to these five islands you're only allowed a sandbox scenario on one, which happens to be Isla Nublar from the original film. This one island is quite underwhelming in terms of the land available, but also there's no finances or progression system on this island, so the strategy element is almost non existent. It's in this respect that Evolution feels majorly restrictive at times, and an island customisation feature like in Operation Genesis is sorely needed if I'm to donate whole chunks of my life towards this game. Unfortunately the settings and challenges just feel samey at the moment, but this is a small issue that could easily be fixed within due course.

That small area pictured is all the space you have to fulfill your childhood dreams. Space is really the only thing stopping you, as there's fuck all strategy to succeeding on this island.

The focal point of Evolution is thankfully the dinosaurs, and my fucking God have they nailed that aspect. There's nothing quite like the feeling of releasing your very first dinosaur in this game. It's an experience that almost mirrors Dr. Grant's shock in the original Jurassic Park. Even if your first released dinosaur is some shitty ostrich like thing, it still feels fucking amazing. Here you have a dinosaur created in stunning detail that you yourself have just released. It's a fucking glorious feeling. This feeling is then amplified by a million times when you end up releasing huge beasts like the Brachiosaurus and T-Rex. I don't mean to sound over the top, but these brief interactions are up their with the greatest moments I've ever experienced in gaming. You know shit's about to go down when you release a new T-Rex. You hear the thud, there's opera singers creating a foreboding atmosphere instantly, followed by that bloodcurdling roar, and then Jeff Goldblum appears and calls you an idiot. Just. Fucking. Brilliant. What's equally amazing is how these dinosaurs are animated. Large carnivores appear just as vicious as they look, and they will fucking murder anything you put in their way with the impressive fighting sequences. There's a whole range of dinosaurs to unlock from all over the planet. You also have the ability to roughly genetically modify as well, allowing you to create their own personalities as well as making them look nicer. There's no doubt in my mind that this game portrays dinosaurs in a different league to any other game in history, and even rivals the films with just how epic they all appear.

Releasing a T-Rex is a particular moment that I don't think will ever get tiring.

Dinosaurs are great and all, but there needs to be a decent strategy game under the surface. We've already covered the disappointing sandbox island, but the mission based islands also suffer from big flaws. Evolution adopts a style that's designed to be fundamentally calm and peaceful, but when things go wrong it's genuinely stressful. And things definitely do go wrong all the time, especially if you stupidly decide to house dinosaurs that are really needy, like those wankers commonly known as Stegosaurus. Aside from these assholes I was largely disappointed by the forgiveness displayed in Evolution. In Operation Genesis the Ingen board would go ape shit if there was a mere hint that any casualties might occur, and your star rating and income would plummet if any large scale destruction did occur. However in Evolution a large massacre might hurt your star rating a bit, but that can easily be forgotten about in a few minutes. In this respect this new game feels less like a genuine simulation, and you can casually leave that rabid Spinosaurus you created in relative peace of mind that he won't unexpectedly act like a complete dick. Meanwhile in Operation Genesis a light bit of drizzle would end up sending all your large carnivores fucking crazy. That game felt like a real challenge to master, whereas in Evolution the strategy elements take a very noticeable backseat. In truth Evolution is painfully simplistic. You incubate and release some dinosaurs, and then you'll make some money. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. Maybe this simplicity was on purpose, and it's certainly a very accessible game, but there's only so much gawking at dinosaurs you can do before you start wishing for more.

Your T-Rex might be crashing through enclosures and murdering everything in sight, but strangely nobody seems to give a shit.

This brings me on to the biggest disappointment in Evolution. At one stage of this game, and this may be after about half an hour or about twenty hours, you get the sudden crushing realisation that the whole game is a bit limited. At the end of the day every event in the game is alarmingly predictable, from simplistic dinosaur behaviour to the mindless zombies that are presented as guests. Don't get me wrong, I love creating elaborate enclosures for my dinosaurs on a scale I could only imagine in my wildest dreams as a kid, but endlessly repeating this action actually gets quite tiresome after a while. Furthermore the missions are too basic and rarely give you a chance to flex your creativity. In Operation Genesis the missions and challenges were so diverse and varied, always keeping you on your toes, and giving you a real sense that you're managing your own troublesome dinosaur park. In Evolution there's not much variation, and the same strategy will often reap the same rewards. The only diversity in missions comes from the contracts, where you try and please key members of staff. However these small tasks are spontaneous and just flat out unnecessary, adding nothing to the experience apart from a cheap method of progression. Other features, such as being forced to repetitively refill feeders, are not particularly fun either, and just irritating quite frankly. In fact there's a whole level of unnecessary faff involved in just the basic tasks, so when something does go horribly wrong, and it will, you suddenly have the stressful task of opening about five different sub-menus at once to complete a single action. Half of Evolution feels like it could have done with a lot of refining, whereas the other half feels as though it requires much more detail. It's a strange mix, and yet somehow the game almost manages to pull it off.

The critical point is that Jurassic World Evolution is a ton of fun, and certainly lives up to the huge expectations of this mammoth franchise. I do think Operation Genesis is a better rounded and more ambitious title than Evolution, but this newer game has plenty of charms itself to keep you entertained. In truth this game could have gone horribly wrong, and if you're picky about strategy games and revel in relentlessly micromanaging every aspect of the park then you may feel it has. I don't however. Evolution may well be more style over substance, but it's a really enjoyable game to sink hours into, with a basis on lovingly staring at dinosaurs rather than spreadsheets. You could say this is a biased review, and you may be right, because I fucking love dinosaurs, so I'm always going to enjoy myself in a game of this style. If for some stupid reason you find dinosaurs to be anything but exciting then this definitely won't be a game you'll end up enjoying. However no matter what your opinion on dinosaurs there's no denying that the original Operation Genesis was the better game, but don't let that fool you into thinking this new Jurassic Park title can't stand on its own two feet.


Final Score: 8/10

Christoforge Reviews: Call of Duty WW2

Now that this particular multiplayer centered game has had a proper cycle I feel it's time for me to share my honest views of how I found this experience. Call of Duty WW2 is a hugely important title in the franchise, and possibly the most important, so I feel it's only appropriate to give a full review on a game that took the franchise back into the past for the first time in a number of years. Publishers Activision promised to get player's boots on the ground, meaning none of this jet pack and double jumping bullshit from previous futuristic titles would be anywhere near the game. Also this title would have an added emphasis on historical accuracy, and give players an experience that mirrored titles that put this franchise on the map. The simple question is whether this change in creative direction has payed off? The answer is 'mostly'. Technically this game is yet another solid outing for the boys over at Activision. The colour palette is a rough mix of dull and brutal colours, and this is paired with a harsh soundtrack that aims to put you right into the middle of a war zone. Similarly the graphics and gameplay are nicely done, with no real revolutionary features, but nothing feels noticeably terrible. Unfortunately the game starts to show its failings when we analyse the core game modes:

We'll start with the campaign, which is a tale of two halves. The good news is there seems to have been a lot of effort put into the campaign in this Call of Duty installment. Instead of just a linear experience that can be played at the user's preferred pace, we now have an experience with a number of different mechanics required to master the mode. For instance the player now has to find health packs or use squad abilities to heal themselves instead of just waiting behind some cover for a bit before blitzing their way through the next portion of the mission. In fact there are a number of new squad abilities included in the campaign, and although they aren't the most sophisticated mechanics, they do change player strategies depending on the scenario. They don't get much more advanced than lobbing smoke grenades to rain mortar fire on enemies, but they are good additions to a mode becoming stale in its old age. The next Call of Duty game is rumored not to even bother with a single player campaign, so you can see how revolutionary these features turned out to be.

As this may be the last Call of Duty campaign I'll get to review I feel I must point out that I really did enjoy the squad centered experience for the most part, and I may even be willing to slap the phrase 'authentic' on some of the missions. Not everything blows up for no reason, and some segments show a surprising amount of grace and poignancy, if those are the right words to describe a rather average campaign. Okay the characters aren't the most memorable, but they do feel like a genuine squad facing the perils of war. The campaign is at its best when its focusing on stories of conflict within the world, and not the relationships between its characters. For some reason there's this ridiculous subplot forced into the story about treachery within the squad that makes the writing of soap operas seem classy. This subplot becomes increasingly frustrating when you discover that it eventually becomes the focal point of the whole campaign. When ignoring the betrayals of the squad the player is treated to some great missions, most notably one in which you play as a French Resistance agent aiming to infiltrate a Nazi headquarters in Central Paris. Unfortunately this highlight doesn't have much of a purpose other than a brief diversion from the main campaign, and soon its straight back to the vanilla world of Operation Overlord.

 You look important mate, but that's not a good enough reason for me to give a shit about you.

The campaign really starts to fall apart when you start analysing the jumbled tone of the main storyline. The campaign aims to cover serious topics with historical accuracy, and even at one stage has you liberating a concentration camp, yet this is coupled with a few ridiculous over the top sequences and a narrative that just completely loses its serious atmosphere after a certain tragedy within the squadron. It was relatively tame before then, aside from a train chasing mission that was so stupid it made me turn my whole console off in anger. I don't think I've ever rage quit a Call of Duty game because the story was so shit, but this brief moment of stupidity was enough to infuriate me. Why would you include that foolish sequence? You have a game mode where you're trying to get people to care about these realistic events that define the characters, so why the hell are you putting this farcical nonsense anywhere near this supposedly serious tale?

 You literally dodge a whole fucking derailing train in order to survive. Historical accuracy? Fuck right off.

If you were hoping for a detailed analysis of the updated Nazi zombies mode then I'm afraid you're out of luck. I hate this new update of the much loved game mode, and apart from a brief cameo from David Tennant there's nothing this stupid and lifeless (no pun intended) game mode does to make me want to play it over and over again. They've added a new stupid class system, because perks apparently weren't a good enough level of freedom, and there's also story quests that are so unbelievably pointless you wonder why you're wasting you're evening. Those story missions are how you unlock new maps by the way, although why you would ever bother when the first map is so awful to play on is the ultimate question. Quite simply Nazi zombies has become a tedious grind at best, only serving to suck out any repeatability the original game mode had.

Multiplayer, like the campaign, is a game of two halves. Don't get me wrong it's still a fun game to play, but I feel it may have lost a lot of the charm and passion that made previous editions such powerhouses. There's new stuff lying around, but these small additions cannot hope to patch over the huge problems that plague this game mode. One of the more positive additions was the inclusion of a headquarters, where players can meet before matchmaking, and even play around on a shooting range or competing in a 1 vs 1 before joining a multiplayer match. This is all good fun, but let's not forget this is Call of Duty, and so you know that some of the new features will end up ruining much loved features from previous games. The worst culprit in this scenario is the new final game killcam, which has now been changed to what the game deems is the most impressive kill. That would be a brilliant addition if it weren't for the fact that this decision is always 100% wrong, and I've had insane multikills be binned in favour of some shit hardscope a countless number of times.

Arguably an even bigger sinner is the new division system. Remember in days of yore when you could actually customise your classes to your heart's content? Well Sledgehammer decided to remove this iconic system and replace it with a dull set of preset classes where you're only allowed to change your weapons and a single perk, which I might add are all terribly balanced. There's a common theme arising that all these changes don't really revolutionise anything, and the only thing I can say about them is that they're nice little additions. However these changes are a great way to sum this whole game up. What we have is a tale of developers putting little plasters over huge gaping wounds and expecting the game to be as popular as older editions in the franchise. Not surprisingly this attitude doesn't work, and we have a result where the finished product just feels like it's missing that certain something.

Look at that pathetic level of customisation. They're just glorified preset classes.

A great example of how little effort went into these changes can be found in the map design, which to put it mildly are not up to an acceptable standard. There was a grand total of nine at launch, although this doesn't include the new 'war maps', which are much larger due to the nature of this new mission based gamemode. The core maps however are almost unanimously bland, with the only exception being a fun trip into the trenches of Normandy. The maps are so poorly designed you can't even fit more than twelve people on them now, and some of the balancing on them is quite frankly atrocious. Never has the term 'spawn-kill-die' been more appropriately used, even in game modes that support less players than in previous games. And don't even get me started on the scorestreak system. Scorestreaks are now hopelessly unattainable, especially in objective based modes where kills are worth less. Even when you do get them they're pathetic on the whole, and not in any way worth the toil it takes to eventually acquire them. A spy plane for instance is ten fucking kills in objective modes, so fuck knows how you're supposed to get the 30 plus kills required for the higher end streaks. In previous games you could get streaks that would literally end the game for less kills than a fucking pea shooter in this one. Has Activision addressed this? No, instead they've decided to present their asses to be fucked over by the competitive market, and as such we get about fifteen thousand gun balancing changes that just make guns shitter to use instead of properly balancing the fucking things. How fucked up must your priorities be to bend over to a tiny minority of players whilst completely ignoring the vast majority of casual players that buy your game just to have fun? Total madness.

Three kills for this fucking badboy that has fuck all explosive range. Unless of course you're playing a game mode such as Domination, in which case it's SIX FUCKING KILLS.

We've looked at the good, and we've looked at the bad, so now it's time for the downright ugly. This game contains lootboxes. I don't think anyone wants them, but I must say this particular system really isn't that bad and I've unlocked almost everything in them by just playing the game normally. That doesn't mean I don't feel taken advantage of, and that doesn't mean I want them anywhere near the game, I'm just frustrated that Activision felt the need to divert the game away from the wishes of its longtime players just to make a quick buck.

Then we get to the feature that I find the most insulting. Other flaws listed in this review are mere annoyances, but the following feature just completely ruins the experience in many ways from my personal experience. I don't know what idiot decided this was the way to go forwards, but for whatever reason there is an absence of Nazi imagery in the multiplayer game modes, I suppose with the intention to not glorify Nazi extremists. I will say that whatever fucking moron made that decision is an ignorant shitbag attempting to rewrite history into this idyllic misrepresentation in an attempt to not come across as offensive. Well you've certainly pissed me off, and I find the decision to remove important historical points in a mature rated shooting game, where the aim is to put bullets into your opposing number, a disgraceful decision that insults the memory of real individuals who died under this horrific regime. You happily keep every single other historic nation in the game, because as these idiots believe it was only Nazi Germany that committed war crimes during this brutal conflict. This decision, as well as many others made in the development process, just leaves me confused. You have a campaign that marches to the tune of showing history at its most brutal, with repeated whiffs of historical accuracy carrying the storyline. Yet at the same time you have a multiplayer game mode that fails to acknowledge one major party in a conflict, whilst at the same time allowing players the ability to play as a female ethnic minority soldier for either The Wehrmacht or The Red Army. How can I take a supposedly historically accurate game as a serious piece when its been shat on by idiotic creative decisions?

Aside from angering me the multiplayer mode is overall just quite average. It's simply not unique or novel enough to make me favour it over any other Call of Duty, and that's really the fundamental problem with the whole game. Overall I'm glad that Activision decided a little bit of nostalgia was the correct move going forwards, although I suspect it was the success of Battlefield One that really made that decision for them. When we compare these two shooters I have to give the edge to Battlefield, as whilst this Call of Duty has solid gameplay, there's still a lot of rough edges lying around. That's not to say this is a bad game, and the flaws are rarely frustrating, with the majority of features inviting people to play for extensive periods of time.

Call of Duty WW2 is a good game to pick up and play, but as a Call of Duty title I can't help but feel this is one big missed opportunity. It's such a shame we didn't get a modern classic, as the quality at the core of this game is unfortunately marred by moronic creative decisions and a general lack of passion displayed in vast areas of the game. It's still as action packed as any Call of Duty game, which is really the selling point of the series, and I'm glad we've reached that point without any silly jet pack foolishness, but rather embarrassingly I'm now left waiting for another creative spark to get this series off its backside again. Please take my advice and join me on the COD 4 remaster. That's a proper multiplayer shooter that understands what makes the series great.


Final Score: 6/10

Lessons On The #MeToo Era From Spotted Hyenas

As a zoology I like to think that I keep up to date with the latest goings on around the natural world, So imagine my surprise when I discover that Vox had published an amazing article claiming that spotted hyenas are feminists. Surely this couldn't be a weak attempt at trying to push an agenda, and actually a factual piece that presents amazing scientific insight. Oh wait, this is the sort of shit that feminist based science likes to spew out, and the actual content has no basis in any serious academic sphere. Let's have a look at this monstrosity of an article:
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https://www.vox.com/2018/6/18/17469196/metoo-spotted-hyena-pseudopenis-matriarchy
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Get the violins out, I'm balling my eyes out to this tragic tale. This woman's apparent struggle has fuck all to do with hyenas, but thanks for the unnecessary sob story. I was hoping for a serious discussion, not an audition for a low grade talent show. I only wish scientific articles relied on anecdotal tales instead of empirical evidence to create arguments, as this would then become one hell of an article. I'd also bet 100 million pounds that the horrific scenarios described in this introduction are not remotely true, and cannot hope to pass as such a huge generalisation. Surprisingly enough there are no examples of feminism in the natural world other than in human society. That may be because feminism is a political movement, and therefore cannot be comprehended by any other species of animal. This article is off to a promising start.

Holy shit we actually have sources, and scientific ones at that. The studies in question don't actually support the points in some cases, but hey, this is progress in the fucked up world of feminist sciences. The opening source for example clearly states that the size of females compared to males is not even correlated with the presence of a matriarchy, so I have honestly no idea why it's being used to back up a point about the rarity of matriarchies. I'm not quite sure why a social structure where all males are subservient to females is being promoted as inspirational, as I was under the impression feminism was a movement about equality. What's being described here is merely a role reversal rather than a change in attitudes towards sex, so I'm not quite sure what's so inspiring about this system.

There's an interesting paragraph that outlines the barbaric behaviour of the spotted hyena, which is an interesting conclusion in a persuasion piece. Wouldn't a feminist typically claim that tussling for dominance and murdering siblings is a sign of toxic masculinity? I don't think you have to be a feminist to realise that life in matriarchal hyenas in not all fine, and does not resemble the idyllic worlds of fictional characters. You must know you're clutching at straws when you have to start making comparisons to fucking superheroes for your argument on modern society to make any sense. The idea that males are subservient has recently found to be complete bollocks as well, which on the face of things is possibly an even bigger flaw with this argument.

I would also like to add that just because patriarchies may not be inevitable does not make them unnatural. We find male dominated social groups in a vast number of species, as mentioned in this article, so there's no denying that this social system has a presence in nature. Why would matriarchies be seen as all natural and good, but yet patriarchies seen as unnatural and evil?

What the fuck has The Lion King got to do with anything? Are we now suggesting that the negative portrayal of spotted hyenas in The Lion King is some sort of patriarchal plot to dissuade people against a potential matriarchy? I just don't understand this paragraph. What has efficiency in scavenging got to do with smashing patriarchal assumptions? Why does that apply to the sedentary lifestyle in humans?

Surely nobody is going to believe that this picturesque utopia of hyena society you've presented is in anyway genuine. Actually I've just remembered that Vox readers are certified morons, and can't even be described as amateur zoologists, so they'll probably be being sold right into this false message. You only have to watch a single nature documentary to realise that this is not an accurate portrayal of the natural world, and the actions shown in these films should never be emulated by human society. Really all you've done here is describe traits which are often found in socially cooperative animals, so let's stop pretending that promoting women to the top instantly cures the world of all its problems.

Hang on a fucking second. Please tell me that opening point is not a serious argument. Surely as a fucking self proclaimed scientists you would have heard the idea that correlation does not equal causation, and never have I found a more appropriate example of where this phrase could be applied. What you've done here is literally try to imply that matriarchal societies increase intelligence, which is a point that no scientist worth their salt would ever agree with. Quite simply there is no evidence that the huge generalisation you've just made is true. Other 'intelligent' organisms such as dolphins, apes, crows, and octopodes do not live in matriarchal societies, yet display a level of intelligence that would trump any matriarchal organisms. Furthermore there is no evidence presented that matriarchies maintain genetic diversity. All your cited paper shows is that a separate population of spotted hyenas did not dramatically decrease in genetic diversity whilst in a genetic bottleneck. The researchers in this study even point out various other species with differing social structures where this phenomenon can also occur.

You can clearly tell this writer has no background in zoology, as the science used here is simply incorrect. A zoology student at any half decent institution would be beaten within an inch of their life if they made the comment that success can be determined by population number. Firstly this statement doesn't take into account reproductive strategies, and secondly it's completely in denial of the pressures acting on these population sizes. By this logic it would surely make more sense to take advice on society from fruit flies or dung beetles, which exist in far greater numbers than any species of hyena. The IUCN does not share your optimism over their success, and has actually assessed the most successful organism on the African Savannah to be declining in numbers. There is no data on whether this population size has anything to do with the matriarchal society, and seeing as this trend doesn't appear throughout nature we can just ignore this stupid point.

In the final paragraph we find out that merely owning a phallic like structure is alarmingly misogynistic. We never get an explanation why it's misogynistic, or more importantly how a physical trait of a hyena can ever conform to human sociological terms, but I suppose that doesn't matter when you're just throwing buzzwords around with little care. Just a bizarre claim to make. Please stick to the areas of science that you actually know stuff about, and stop making a mockery of my ar.

Strangely there were no spotted hyenas taking part in these women's marches, which I find strange behaviour from such inspirational feminists. It's almost as if they're not feminists at all. I'm not going to go into the arguments surrounding the wage gap, as that's a whole different topic that could be debated over for millennia, as is the fierce debate over sexual misconduct, so I guess my question is why these separate issues are just brushed over in this article, without any explanation as to why they're included. I'll repeat, hyenas do not understand the concept of feminism, so they cannot be seen to contradict it, and they cannot possibly be compared to the feminist movements in previous years. They're fucking hyenas.

Just out of curiosity I get erections to signal dominance rather than submission, but that's a story for another day.

'We're striving for gender equality'. You could have fucking fooled me love, you've spent three quarters of this article brown-nosing every aspect of matriarchal societies that actively subjugate males. I can assure you that as a student of zoology, unlike yourself, I frequently come across systems like the one you've described, and I think you're a fucking idiot to want to copy these systems, and also that this is one of the most stupid articles I've ever read that pretends to be science in order to push an agenda. If we're to believe this writer that spotted hyenas deserve to be on a pedestal with humans in terms of intelligence then we have to accept they can understand morality, ethics, and even the concept of taboo. Quite impressive when you consider there is no evidence these creatures possess these superpowers.

I would also like to add that the gaining of resources is a common method of mate selection in the natural world, most notably in insects and arachnids. Often these mating systems entail the cannibalism of males, so I suppose the question I should be asking is why you would promote these generalised mating systems when they frequently substitute rape and harassment for cannibalism? Are we going to admit that a variety of complex mating systems are prevalent in the natural world that depend on a whole host of stimuli? Or are we going to be repeatedly cherry picking facts to distort the truth? You've previously presented evidence that siblicide is common. Shall we stop pretending that these hyenas live in a feminist utopia, and are actually as barbaric as any species of animal on the face of the Earth. That's all fine by this writer, because hey, at least they're less likely to rape each other. I just can't be assed with this article anymore. The clarity in this argument is just non existent and all over the place. Fucking useless.

Again, I'm lost. Are you moaning at evolution for not installing a natural rape alarm on the human body? Are you proposing a hellish scenario where humans are forcibly implanted? Where's the evidence that this trait evolved to prevent rape from occurring? Surely a more reasonable explanation would be that this mechanism allows females to selectively mate with more attractive males, allowing sperm from unfit males to be simply removed. Nature doesn't bend to your feminist ideology because you claim it does.

You can flip this whole argument on its head with ease, and claim the frequency of patriarchal societies found within nature is evidence that women should be subservient to men, and back this stupid point up by cherry picking positive aspects about the societies of an applicable species. It's a classic naturalistic fallacy where some idiot claims a naturally occurring phenomenon is instantly a positive thing irrespective of the truth. Why that means human society should emulate these natural occurrences is further cause for concern. How pissed off would you be if you spent your whole life fighting for the liberties of women only to discover that some writer in a low grade publication decides that your contributions pale in comparison to fucking hyenas.

As a zoology student this makes me fucking angry. Take your ideological nonsense back to your own area of biology and stop polluting our knowledge of the natural world with this dishonest bullshit. Even the Hyena Society, which was actually sourced in this very piece, was less than pleased with this pathetic article. All this from an author whose literal job description is training young scientists to communicate science. To be fair the message of this one is clear, and the day when spotted hyenas will be chaining themselves to railings and burning their bras is fast approaching.