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