I don’t know if Bradley is happy making those kinds of games – I sincerely hope he is – but it’s kind if heart breaking. For me it would be like finding out that John Carmack was working at an accounting firm, or David Gilmour was now working as a lounge singer in an airport bar.

The hard truth is that we sometimes expect too much from the people we admire. Nevertheless, I will always have respect for Bradley – and who knows – maybe in between making social strategy games for Facebookers, he’ll build an RPG..

FIN.

The first thing to note is that the poll was conducted on Wednesday night (January 11) on behalf of The Augusta Chronicle and The Savannah Morning News. The poll taps 726 likely voters in South Carolina (522 republicans, 20 democrats, and 184 independents) who plan to vote in the Primary. First the whole numbers, which have a +/- margin of error of 4:

• Mitt Romney: 23 percent
• Newt Gingrich: 21 percent
• Rick Santorum: 14 percent
• Ron Paul: 13 percent
• Jon Huntsman: 7 percent
• Rick Perry: 5 percent
• Other: 2 percent
• Undecided/No opinion: 15 percent

Looking at the numbers, and taking the margin of error into account, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are statically tied for first place, followed by Rick Santorum and Ron Paul statistically tied for second, and Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman statistically tied for third.

When we start drilling down into the numbers, it gets interesting. Below we’ll list the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate, based on race, gender, and political identification:

As before, the former Massachusetts governor continues to do well among the 45-64 (34.5 percent) and 65+ (27.8 percent) age groups, but doesn’t fare as well with the lower age groups compared to other candidates. White people seems to like Romney (24.3 percent) while African Americans don’t like him at all. When it comes to gender, Romney has a respectable showing among males (22.2 percent) and females (23.9 percent) as well. Finally, when it comes to political affiliation, Romney scores well with republicans (24.8 percent), but not as well with democrats (16.6 percent) and independents (18.8 percent)

Newt Gingrich does better than Romney in the 18-29 age group (21.3 percent) and almost as well with seniors (31.0 percent). Gingrich doesn’t do quite as well with Whites (20.7), but does surprisingly well with African Americans (50.9 percent) and does well with “Other” (we assume this means Hispanics – 10 percent). Gingrich scores better than Romney with males (25.9 percent) but not with females (16.8 percent). When it comes to political parties, Gingrich gets less support than Romney among republicans (21.4) but does very well with Democrats (27.6) and Independents (20.3)

Comparing Santorum’s and Paul’s numbers, it’s easy to see why Santorum is slightly ahead even though most of his numbers are flat (no greater than 14.5 across all demographics): his greatest strength is that he has more support among republicans than Ron Paul, and with 500+ Republicans taking part in the poll that makes a lot of sense. Paul’s strength is in the 18-29 (19.2) and 30-44 (23.0) age groups; the “other” category of race (44.1 percent) and among those identifying themselves as democrats (34.9) and Independents (29.1). Surprisingly, Newt Gingrich does better than Paul among 18-24 year olds.

Jon Huntsman is stuck well below 15 (single digits in most categories) in every category, though he does better among blacks and independents than Rick Perry. Rick Perry’s decision to jump into South Carolina after Iowa doesn’t seem to have helped him , assuming this polling data is accurate. Their numbers are so low that I won’t bother breaking them down for you.

Here’s the most important numbers to pay attention to: 30.2 percent of 18-24 year olds are undecided, as are “others” (37.9), females (17.0) and Republicans (19.8). Only 1.7 percent said they “wanted someone else.”

So what are the take-aways? Romney may have a real fight on his hands if Gingrich can hold onto these numbers; and Santorum seems to be slipping against Ron Paul – a candidate that by most pundits’ accounts shouldn’t be that close to a social conservative in a state like South Carolina.

Of course, people are fickle this year and these numbers could shift in any conceivable direction. Hopefully future polls from Insider Advantage Georgia will indentify Hispanics by name. “Other is a little too mysterious for me because it could mean anything..

You can check out the poll here. Image Credit: RNC

So how can you go about doing that? Well you can tweet using the hashtag #NHDebate on Twitter, for starters, and you can send questions to YahooNews and ABCNews.
Sunday morning on NBC’s (also a SOPA sponsor) Meet The Press, David Gregory will host a roundtable debate with the remaining Republican Candidates. You can bombard them with questions about SOPA and PIPA by sending a message via Twitter to Meet The Press and David Gregory and on the program’s Facebook page.

For example, why would The United States Conference of Mayors be supporting this bill?  Since the House wants to use this group as supporters for SOPA, maybe you should use the handy search function on its official web site to find your mayor’s contact info and give him or her a piece of your mind.  Maybe Michael A. Nutter, the mayor of Philadelphia can explain why he – by association with this group – supports SOPA; or Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino; San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders; Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn; Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, etc. If your mayor is part of this organization, you can look up their contact information at the top of this site.

Another example of an endorsement that doesn’t make sense is the National Domestic Preparedness Coalition. Why would this non-profit group dedicated to first responders and disaster preparedness support this bill? From their web site:

“The National Domestic Preparedness Coalition, Inc. (NDPCI) is a 501c (3) nonprofit organization established by responders for responders after the September 11th terrorist attacks. The Coalition helps our Nation’s Emergency Responders, from both the public and private sector, to prevent, prepare for and protect their communities from all hazards, including natural disasters and terrorism, by providing the highest quality training and programs at the highest level of efficiency and effectiveness. The Coalition strives to leverage partnerships and participation by those on the frontlines who know best how to address their local homeland security needs.”

What do rogue websites, piracy, and fighting counterfeit goods have to do with a group that seems to be dedicated to first responders? Maybe we should ASK THEM.

Those are just two examples of groups that have aligned themselves with this bill that does not make much sense in my opinion. I’m going to continue looking through this list to find what connections these groups have to this particular issue.

On a related note, the ECA has a handy form to locate your elected official and let him or her know that you strongly disapprove of this bill. You don’t have to be an ECA member to use it (but you probably should be, because they represent gamers and consumers instead of corporations). For the record I write for a publication that is owned by the ECA.

One last note to anyone watching the Republican primaries and planning on voting in the states that remain: what is your candidate’s position on SOPA and PIPA? Do any of the groups that support this legislation support your candidate? These are questions you need to be asking yourselves. You also need to know if your elected officials are up for re-election and if they support these bills. If they do, send them a message, and if they won’t listen use the one last bit of power you have as a citizen: vote against them.

How to rob everyone blind in Disgaea 4 with little effort.

One of the most difficult things to do in Disgaea 4 is stealing. For the longest time I couldn’t figure it out; I felt like my Master Thief was a master loser without any real purpose. But I figured out a trick that made getting those rarest of rare items off of the hardest bosses easy as pie. The stealing part is easy but getting to a point where you get 99 percent from an Awesome Hand was not. The method I used follows – chances are there are spoilers in here, so don’t read this post beyond this point if you are worried about such things…

You may recall in my last post on Disgaea 4 that I have been using enforcers to move unsubdued innocents around. Using the stacking and level 96 (taking Innocent boost paths all the way there) weapon as a way to build up stacks of subdued innocents.

The first time I fought Zetta in the post game I realized he had a lot of stuff I wanted. I also realized that my level 1100 thief couldn’t touch the stuff. Stealing requires you to use a hand and a hand with more HIT works best. So I posited that adding Marksmen to an Awesome Hand would help me steal..

So I added a stack of 16,000 and went back in to test it on Zetta, who I had not yet been able to defeat. What I learned was that – at the cost of four stacks of subdued Marksman and four awesome hands I was able to easily pick Zetta clean of every item in his possession. I had a probability of 99 percent from the front and back and I was able to take everything – including Makai Wars.

Now some might argue that this is a waste of time, but how many Makai Wars will you run into in this game? Ultimately the time I spent subduing these innocents was worth sacrificing to get these items off of Zetta and into my possession. As soon as I had it in my inventory I equipped to Valvatorez and used it against Zetta to finally beat him.

What’s interesting about this method is that it throws the level requirement for your thief right out the window. In my example Zetta was level 5,000 and my Master Thief was a mere 1100. The last piece of advice I’ll leave you with is that it doesn’t hurt to have a fifth stack of Marksman on your thief. It’s the difference between never missing and occasionally missing. Be sure to save before you do anything else though..

This trick does not work in the Senate or against any of your characters if you happen to run into their alter egos in character world.

Still it’s worth the effort to create some special helpers for those ultra rare rank 40 items. Also because Zetta’s Makai Wars is Legendary it’s an absolute must have…

Next time we’ll talk about the Legendary Tree and the Sacrificial Altar and why these Evil symbols can save your ass in the most serious of fights.

Since I’m enjoying Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten, I thought it would be fun to share how I beat a couple of the extra unlockable characters in the post-game, as well as some general tips that worked pretty well for me. Yes there are SPOILERS in there, so if you are a Sensitive Sally then you shouldn’t read it.

Leharl is pretty easy to beat if you have the Dual Dojo Evil symbol. You can use either Valvatorez or some other damage dealer, or your favorite high level Skull, but the main goal is to kill off all the monsters around him that he’ll use to Magichange into a one-hit killer. He’s like the Dexter of the Netherworld with his minions’ help so the best thing you can do is have a couple of good guys that can toss at least 6 squares. Make a tower that will lift your Skull (who at this point should be dual-wielding two Magichanged monsters) and toss him into the far-left side of the map. Since you get two attacks, put them all on those vile demons surrounding Leharl and – if you can put some Terra level spells on him as well.

Once you take out his helpers, Leharl is an easy take-down. You can either use Leharl and a fusion-Magichanged Desco to take out the monster that are left or – if your Skull lived through round one – have your throwers send him back down the left side to help.

If you do everything right, Leharl will join your party.

How to beat 8-bit Asagi, the wanna-be main character that never gets any respect.. or to be the main character. You’ll need a few things to make this whole thing work, but the main tactic I used was dual wielding Magichanged monsters on my Skull. Dual wielding allows to use two attacks in one turn so it’s a great way to sock it to Asagi before she uses those giant Rifle Demons to transform herself into an unstoppable killing machine with well over one million hit points.

You’ll need a Skull higher than 1600, two monsters that Magichange into a staff, a Professor with the magic range spell and a heavy hitter such as Valvatorez and a giant Magichanged sword (combine Desco with someone else for best results. You’ll also need a couple of low-level chumps to toss you around.

First fuse your Giant Desco, pull Valvatorez up (but don’t walk him out of the base camp just yet) and then Magichange Desco on to him. Walk him up the stairs and kill the three Gunslingers. Bring someone out to go up, grab him and toss him back into the base camp.

Next pull out the two monsters you want to Magichange into weapons for your skull. Pull the skull up, Magichange them to him, and walk him up to the exact point where the Gunslingers were. Pull out a professor and cast Magic Range on the Skull. Now here’s where things get fun; if you did everything correctly you can now hit those giant Rifle Demons and Asagi. You have two attacks and you’ll want to use the most powerful spell you have – preferably in the Terra level.. I used the 6th tier in that group because it can hit more in a wider space. Put one attach on the Rifle Demons, then put the 5th Tier terror on Asagi. You may or may not hit her but you’ll kill of the rifle demons, which helps a lot. Get someone to toss the Skull back in the base camp. That leaves three units out on the field, but it will cause the remaining enemies on the board to group together in a close pattern. Focus all your energy on Asagi at the point – toss your mage up as far as you can and drop a couple of Terra’s on her. Chances are she’s dead and all you have left is leftover bad guys.

Once you mop up the rest of them you’ll get Asagi and access to a new evil symbol.

Some General Tips…

Once you beat the game, you’ll be able to unlock Mount Ordeal. There are four maps in there but the most important ones are 1 and 4. The first map is important because it’s a great place to farm Enforcers. Enforcers are great for gathering innocents into one item. Each Enforcer will let you move an innocent ten times. Sometimes in the map you’ll find one enforcer on an enemy or two, so that’s 20 times that you can move an item. One note in case you don’t know – you can’t combine enforcers, so don’t even bother unless you feel like wasting your efforts..
Here’s why you’ll want to mess around with moving innocents into one place. If you level an item up to level 96 (use a Legendary Item) and take all the Innocent Boost Routes, you can potentially triple how many you’ll get when you subdue them.

Once you have an item as I’ve described above, use those enforcers to gather them all together in it, and SAVE YOUR GAME, and then go into it. If the unsubdued Innocent doesn’t show up, quit, reload your save and try again. When he does show up kill him and Gency out.

If you haven’t hit the limit on that stack of Innocents, simply use an Enforcer to move unsubdued Innocents into the item and combine them to make them unsubdued again. Save your game and do what you did the first time.

It’s an easy way to get massive stacks of stat-boosting Innocents in a short amount of time, and is actually more effective than the old Puppy Paw Stick method from Disgaea 3.

The other level in Mount Order is great for power leveling. You’ll get the most out of it if you use your Training Ground symbol, Mana symbol, and a Professor or two with the Teaching License Evilities (gives 20 percent more experience if she is on the field.) I’ve also found that you can get all your monsters in on the action by Magichange them to your “characters in training.”

If you are not at Mount Ordeal yet, another great place to train is Level 9-4. If you adjust the difficulty by passing the appropriate Bill in the Senate, you’ll be able to use the old level 99 trick. You can find a ton of info about that elsewhere..

I’ll have more on my adventures in Disgaea 4 in the days ahead. If you haven’t picked it up yet and you enjoy strategy RPG’s there’s then you should. It’s probably the deepest experience you’ll find, save other games in the series.

Instead you are the adventurer wandering around the world, killing anything that moves and gathering up cash and treasure to buy all the things you’ll need from the item shop. Clearly Recettear’s influence can be found in this game as well, with all the market fluctuations and familiar items from that game dropped in to this one.

I like the way the game handles buying and selling, and how important it is that you spend the money you do earn wisely. Also I enjoy the way the game handles character progressions – through the use of items… Anyway, you can check out my final thoughts on the game over at GameShark. The bottom line is that I think this is a lovely game that deserves more attention than it is getting.

Just keep saying it..

In my day job I have to read a lot of editorials written by people that have absolutely no clue how things work in the real world, and they don’t bother to do any research. There are usually two reasons for this:

1) They are fucking lazy.

2) The find that the truth doesn’t support the tone of their bullshit rhetoric.

Yes, I seem a bit angry about this because it perpetuates a great untruth: that Leland Yee’s attempt to control retailers through the threat of a hefty fine somehow helped parents. This is to be expected in any subject that is even remotely political, but when the overwhelming majority of the opposition to video games can’t get their head around the basic facts and the reality of the situation it’s unnerving. It’s even more agitating when a seasoned columnist, a politico, or someone with a journalism degree engages in this kind of writing.

I am speaking about Brown v. the EMA in this case, but this whole conversation could be a MadLib about anything that has to do with politics. Passion should never get in the way of truth, no matter how well-intentioned the writer is.

So what are the basic truths of the Supreme Court’s recent decision on the 2005 California violent video game law?

1) While there has been a lot of research on children and videogames, there is no concrete evidence that videogames cause long-term aggressive behavior any more than watching television, or movies;

2) Children cannot buy violent video games at most retail stores in the United States because these companies voluntarily adhere to the ESRB rating system and require ID checks for children attempting to purchase a game that is not intended for their age group. The Federal Trade Commission does a report every year and the last report put video game retailers at the top of the list when it comes to enforcing ratings systems. The report also showed that it was harder to get a video game than it was for teens to get into an R rated movie, buy a DVD or purchase musical with parental warnings.

These are facts and while anti-game pundits can spin the numbers and the research, at the end of the day the fact remains that the 2005 law was an overreach by the state of California – in addition to being excessive, unreasonable, wrongheaded and unneeded. Parents have so many tools to keep them informed about video games already, they just need to use them.

These tools have always been there too. Parents have always had a choice. If anything parents are not doing enough to inform themselves about ratings and the appropriate amount of screen time for their children.

Image via.

And I am not alone. Zynga has come to the conclusion that social gaming means begging for help from your friends constantly. We are all scratching our necks like crack heads itching for a fix when we’re craving those blue prints or that special armor to complete some building. When in doubt just ask a friend, right?

But the worst part of it all is that my friends are vagrants too. We’re all just wandering around Facebook begging each other for change like homeless people in that episode of South Park where they invade the town and wander around aimlessly like zombies looking for employed people to beg from. Beggars begging from beggars.**

Maybe that’s my biggest gripe with Zynga games; they force you to ask too much of your friends and with a frequency that is ridiculous. No one really wants to fill their wall with hundreds or thousands of posts a week about how their fake army crushed another fake army, or that their crops won the blue ribbon at the imaginary county fair. The truth is that it is all bad game mechanics thrust at the player so frequently that even the most conscientious player occasionally slips and makes an errant wall post.

Some of our friends must read those posts or get those requests from us and just shake their heads. They must be thinking who gives a fuck about your stupid imaginary mob or your lame play army? They secretly wish our crops would wither and die, that our stupid pet will be run over by a bus, and that our virtual civilization would slide into the ocean and deposit itself right next to Atlantis.

And when you’re not filling your wall with obnoxious posts about your stupid achievements or asking for virtual hand-out, you’re being asked to spend real money on fake things. I get it. Zynga is monetizing its products to the best of its ability, because it makes millions of dollars on these crazy micro-transactions. I don’t have a problem with that. But monetization and pseudo socialization should always take a back seat to core game design. Zynga may have the data to back up why it is important to constantly bombard players with messages about wall posts, in-game purchases, and requests for help from friends, but maybe it should consider dialing back some of these things to make these games more fun.

*I will continue to beg from my friends when playing any and all social games.

**I take no offense at my friends who ask for help in this or any other Facebook game.

YS Chronicles I & II fared slightly better. I really enjoyed this re-release on PSP and appreciated that the game mostly retains its original charm.

Check out both reviews and all the other great writing over at GameShark. It is no longer a site you visit for cheat codes and leave. In fact I don’t even know if there are cheat codes available over there anymore..