All Your Base Are Belong To Us — The Kip Lange Homepage

Obviously, this isn’t really me rooting for a Dem to win the general. The question is…which one is easier for McCain to beat?

I think it’s almost a tie. If Hillary is nominated, you have a candidate who has negative ratings of 40% and up. The “I’ll vote for a toaster oven over her” crowd. Which includes me.

So, high negatives, good news for Republicans.

Then you got Barack. Obama’s weaknesses are clear — two terms as a state Senator and half a term as a real Senator. Although it also gives him a very limited voting record. But that cuts both ways. There’s no doubt McCain would beat him in experience, but can a 71-year-old fend off an energized Barack Obama?

The conservative base would certainly turn out more for an Obama general rather than a Hillary general, I think. Obama is just way too liberal. Likable as he is, I’d rather, if the Reps are defeated, have HRC in office than Barack Obama. Not by much, but by a smidge.

HRC may also suffer from “Bush-Clinton” fatigue in the general as well. You know, the curse of the plutocracy we’ve lived under for a couple of decades. I’m sick of it; everyone is sick of it. Give us something not named Bush or Clinton. I don’t care if it’s a moderate-sized rock. Seriously.

I think, on the balance, though, in the end, you’d want an Obama general if you’re a conservative. I don’t think the oratory can outmuscle McCain’s experience. Let’s not forget that McCain is not some nice, peaceful, serene guy. He has a temper and a long history of shooting his mouth off bigtime (he curses all the time as well). Guy does have balls. Obama will run more liberally than Hillary would. HRC would occupy the same “moderate” space on the Dem side that McCain represents on the Rep side. I don’t think Clinton fatigue gets you past that. Total inexperience, which Obama brings, might crop up quite badly in debates during the general election.

Although at the end of the day, it truly is a doubled-edged sword on the Dem side for Reps. And still a hard pill to swallow for conservatives with McCain the nominee.

I recently received a pissy email from someone who apparently thinks it’s my job or something to review games and was appalled that I didn’t offer anything beyond quick impressions after my vast 10 minute experience dabbling in the Devil May Cry IV.

So here…

Gamespot puts the game’s score as: 8.0 (“Great”) out of 10.

I would nudge it to an 8.5. On Gamespot it’s an 8.0 for the 360 and the PS3 both, although I own the PS3 version, so my comments are going to be more geared that way.

Devil May Cry IV is going to feel the same for followers of the series, control-wise. However, if you’re new to it – it’s along the lines of a game like Ninja Gaiden Sigma. You have sword repertoires you can learn, abilities you can boost – by picking up colored orbs left by dead enemies. The DMC series has always been — and DMC IV does not deviate — a lot of very fun hack and slash with a smidge of role-playing game mixed in and maybe one or two puzzles reminiscent of Resident Evil.

There is one issue to get to first — game installation. It takes 22 minutes on the PS3 for DMC IV to install 5 gigs of game data. Is this worth it? YES. The load times for DMC IV are some of the quickest I’ve ever seen on any PS console, any game…but the installation is guaranteed to annoy you.

DMC IV sets you up as…a guy named Nero, not Dante (at first), who doesn’t have the familiar “Devil Trigger” that pops up with Dante after taking enough damage, the one that turns him into an unstoppable force for a few seconds. To replace that, you’ve got a devil “arm” capable of delivering huge blows for Nero, big pile-driver smackdowns, grabbing enemies, and navigating certain areas.

Nero and his demon arm (click for larger image).

Note — for a full gallery of screenshots, go right here.

As I mentioned, as you proceed through the game, you will power up your skills and abilities with your weapons and in-general. For instance, it costs a good deal to get “air hike” – for non-DMCers, that’s like a triple kick in the air (you kick off of air once).

The graphics for DMC IV are very, very good-looking for a 3rd-person shooter. The settings are designed well, the characters move in convincing ways, and there are no real bugs – except for camera malaise. Parts of DMC IV allow a free-roving camera view, others lock you down into one particular camera view, making it difficult sometimes to deal with multiple threats coming from two or more locations at once.

The combat engine is well-done, as usual, and contains nothing that new, really – well, new moves, same idea. The more “stylish” and varied your attacks against your opponent are without letting yourself get hit, the higher your orb modifier goes up, meaning, kill with style and you’ll get more orbs, which in turn power you up further or allow you to buy items.

And don’t worry – you get to play Dante eventually.

DMC IV also allows the Capcom tradition, mentioned above, of replaying parts (or the entire) game as another character – once unlocked. Like many recent FPSers (although DMC IV is a true 3rd person slasher/shooter), it also has a system of rewards and badges you win (say, for killing 100 demons in a row).

Did I mention a story? No. There really isn’t much of a story here, I’m afraid. I mean, yeah, it’s there, but it’s weak compared to every other aspect of the game. The voice acting in the game is also a weak point, not really helped by the fact that this is a game really geared for a Japanese market first — Japan loves the weird demons (DMC) and the U.S. loves the zombies (Resident Evil). But if even some of the look of this game spills over onto Resident Evil 5 — we’re looking at a really great RE coming up.

To sum up, after playing it for a good amount of time now, I will re-grade (based on a scale of 10, which is pretty damn obvious) the two most important factors for me in a game:

Graphics: 9 (it’s PS3 eye candy; I can’t speak for the 360 version)
Gameplay: 8 (could be higher but it’s repetitive at points and the sometimes-fixed camera makes fighting difficult in certain areas)

That’s all I’m going to throw out there, plus the above admittedly short review. Again, there is the replay value for those who want to buy (although, in my humble opinion, shelling out $20 more for the “Collector’s Edition” is insane).

DMC IV is a good, solid game, and perhaps the best in the franchise in terms of gameplay, and most definitely way up there on the eye-candy scale (barring the annoying fixed-camera moments).

In addition, DMC IV comes with rumble support (works fine with the rumble controller I have; rumble is a little less energetic overall, though, I’ve found)

Now, whoever emailed me wanting a more detailed review – someone who seems to think it is my obligation to write more detailed reviews on a small, personal blog (I’m not exactly the Gaming News here) – shaddup. Hehe.

Bear in mind, first, that I love the DMC series, so I’m a little biased. But I will give DMC:

– 8.5 overall (out of 10)

– 9 on graphics

– 8.5 on gameplay (I’d give it a 9 but sometimes the camera gets annoying)

For all those who love the DMC series, like myself, you will surely want to at least rent this game.

I wanted to go back and say a little more regarding G.C.’s remark that had a black player with braids run off the field early, you’d have heard stories of him being a “cancer to the team” and stuff like that, whereas Belichick skips away without anybody pointing it out.

What I want to say is — I agree. Look at the awful death of Sean Taylor. Two seconds after the press found out, it was just automatically assumed that this must have happened because he was hanging out with the wrong crowd…because he was black…

Of course, it turned out that the NFL apparently didn’t sufficiently warn Sean Taylor about spending quiet, peaceful nights at home.

Or…look back to when Randy Moss mooned the Green Bay fans. He was immediately slapped with the hothead-misbehavin’ mantle. Give me a break! Personally, I thought it was funny. Even if it wasn’t, it didn’t deserve to be made into the big deal it ended up as, and the only reason it ended up as a big deal is because Randy Moss is black. That’s just my two cents, but I really believe that.

So I wanted to say that on this one, I’m 100% with G.C. There is still a double standard in the NFL (and in plenty of other sports) that will scapegoat a black player for “shenanigans” that a white player or coach could get away with.

I don’t like it, I don’t like it one bit, but the only good news is that the only movement is forward…a lot of people thought the Randy Moss Green Bay incident was way overblown. I think it will only get better and better, that’s all I can say. Racism still exists, and we can’t have an honest debate on racism until we all admit that fact (that racism exists), and, furthermore, that we will not see the end of racism in our lifetime. It will get better, but it won’t go away. Not in my lifetime, anyway.

But, in the plus column, we have a serious black candidate for president this time around (and screw Bill Clinton for that race-baiting he did, including dismissing Obama by comparing him to Jesse Jackson). That’s progress. A lot of progress.

You can only hope it gets better.

Here is the ACU’s list of ratings for everybody in the ’08 race.

Disgruntled conservative friends will still find this not enough, though, I know. Just trying to make the case…to the choir for once.

Really. I heard what I wanted to hear. No retreat in Iraq, no letting up pressure on Iran and other rogue countries, no flip-flop on his immigration stance, assurances that he will not elect activist judges to the Supreme Court…not bad.

Remains to be seen if the rest of my conservative brethren begin to embrace it…

No more Mitt.

Jimmy Crack Corn, and I don’t care. 😉

I said listen before, but now I’m telling you to read. Read this piece by Jeff Jacoby that I’m about to put in here, and think about it. Because I think this column really, really, really hits the nail on the head.

——

A CONSERVATIVE’S CASE FOR MCCAIN
By Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe

Sunday, February 3, 2008

It is not news that much of the conservative base bitterly opposes John McCain and is appalled that the man they consider a Republican apostate could soon be the GOP’s presidential nominee. From talk radio to the blogosphere to the conservative press, many on the right are outraged that what Mitt Romney last week called “the House that Reagan Built” — the modern Republican Party — might anoint as its standard-bearer the candidate who by their lights is the least likely to follow in the Gipper’s footsteps.

Conservatives bristle at the thought of a Republican president who might raise income and payroll taxes. Or enlarge the federal government instead of shrinking it. Or appoint Supreme Court justices who are anything but strict constructionists. Or grant a blanket amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.

Now, I don’t believe that a President McCain would do any of those things. But President Reagan did all of them. Reagan also provided arms to the Khomeini theocracy in Iran, presided over skyrocketing budget deficits, and ordered US troops to cut and run in the face of Islamist terror in the Middle East. McCain would be unlikely to commit any of those sins, either.

Does this mean that Reagan was not, in fact, a great conservative? Of course not. Nor does it mean that McCain has not given his critics on the right legitimate reasons to be disconcerted. My point is simply that the immaculate conservative leader for whom so many on the right yearn to vote is a fantasy; ideological purity and presidential politics are never a perfect fit. Conservatives who say that McCain is no Ronald Reagan are right, but Mitt Romney is no Ronald Reagan either. Neither is Mike Huckabee. And neither was the real — as opposed to the mythic — Ronald Reagan.

The conservative case against McCain is clear enough; I made it myself in some of these columns when he first ran for president eight years ago. The issues that have earned McCain the label of “maverick” — campaign-finance restrictions, global warming, the Bush tax cuts, immigration, judicial filibusters — are precisely what stick in the craw of the GOP conservative base.

But this year, the conservative case *for* McCain is vastly more compelling.

On the surpassing national-security issues of the day — confronting the threat from radical Islam and winning the war in Iraq — no one is more stalwart. Even McCain’s fiercest critics, such as conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, will say so. “The world’s bad guys,” Hewitt writes, “would never for a moment think he would blink in any showdown, or hesitate to strike back at any enemy with the audacity to try again to cripple the US through terror.”

True enough, McCain was never an agenda-driven movement conservative. But he “entered public life as a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution,” as he puts it, and on the whole his record has been that of a robust and committed conservative. He is a spending hawk and an enemy of pork and earmarks. He has never voted to increase taxes, and wants the Bush tax cuts made permanent for the best of reasons: “They worked.” He is a staunch free-trader and a champion of school choice. He is unabashedly prolife and pro-Second Amendment. He opposes same-sex marriage. He wants entitlements reined in and personal retirement accounts expanded.

McCain’s conservatism has usually been more a matter of gut instinct than of a rigorous intellectual worldview, and he has certainly deviated from Republican orthodoxy on some serious issues. For all that, his ratings from conservative watchdog groups have always been high. “Even with all the blemishes,” notes National Review, a leading journal of the right (and a backer of Romney), “McCain has a more consistent conservative record than Giuliani or Romney. . . . This is an abiding strength of his candidacy.”

As a lifelong conservative, I wish McCain evinced a greater understanding that limited government is indispensable to individual liberty. I wish he were more skeptical of politically-correct environmentalism, and less inclined to expand top-down regulation. Yet there is no candidate in either party who so thoroughly embodies the conservatism of American honor and tradition as McCain, nor any with greater moral authority to invoke it. For all his transgressions and backsliding, McCain radiates integrity and steadfastness, and if his heterodox stands have at times been infuriating, they also attest to his resolve. Time and again he has taken an unpopular stand and stuck with it, putting his career on the line when it would have been easier to go along with the crowd.

A perfect conservative he isn’t. But he is courageous and steady, a man of character and high standards, a genuine hero. If “the House that Reagan Built” is to be true this year to its best and highest ideals, it could do a lot worse than unite behind John McCain.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)

Right. It’s here. Today is the day John McCain will get his biggest chance to speak directly to the conservative base of the party and try to convince them (us, I guess, but he’s already convinced me) that he’s the guy to vote for; that “suicide voting” for Hillary as a conservative is insane, that John McCain will hold together the “house that Reagan built”.

He’s going straight into the belly of the beast — he’s speaking in front of CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference.

These are the hardcore conservatives. These are my brethren. My disgruntled brethren.

All I ask for both CPAC attendees and those who aren’t attending, but are CPAC sorts, who will see McCain’s speech, is to just listen to him. Give him the benefit of the doubt. For decades we have argued that conservatives are, contrary to common wisdom, more open-minded than liberals.

So let’s try to live up to that. Let’s prove it. That’s all I ask. I know many of you are having trouble swallowing some of McCain’s remarks and actions in the past. But McCain’s conservative record is there; he’s almost always in the 80s on conservative watchdog lists such as the ACU rating list, and almost near zero in the liberal column. Yes, he worked with Ted Kennedy on legislation. Do I like that? No. Do I think it’s that big a deal, though? No, no I don’t.

John McCain is an honest-to-god hero, a man who has accomplished more than any ordinary politician (are you listening to me, Ann Coulter, you stupid stick-figure bitch? *grumble* — sorry, I’m a Malkin guy, Coulter is just too stupid for even me to stomach, no matter how great an attack dog she is). This is a man who was offered release from a POW camp — and let someone else go in his place. Ask yourself — do you think Mitt Romney would have ever done that? Do you think Mitt even could have done that? Mitt Romney, who is stupid and sufficiently out of touch with reality enough to think that he can compare his sons campaigning for him for president to soldiers fighting in Iraq?

All I’m saying, my fellow conservatives, is that this man deserves to be listened to, at the very least. And not booed as soon as he takes the stage. I know he finished dead last in the CPAC 2007 straw poll, but times have changed, and McCain is our best chance to get a Republican (and, in my mind, a conservative) — frankly, in objective reality; the reality that exists outside of talk radio — into the White House.

Just listen. Keep an open mind. Please. I beg of you. I know, I know what McCain said about Alito. It sticks in my craw just like it sticks in yours. I know that we all know he made the wrong decision in limiting political free speech with his campaign finance “reform”.

But, for the love of God, do you think Hillary or Obama would appoint better justices to the Supreme Court? Do you really think that?

And I want you to do one other thing, my brethren. I want you to think about what happens if we get hit again on American soil by Islamic terrorists. I want you to ask yourself whom you’d rather have staring down the tyrants of this world. Who is more likely to blink first while staring down Islamic extremism? McCain, Romney, or Huckabee?

You know the answer.

Just listen. It’s all I ask. I have the greatest respect for CPAC, and I wish I was attending this year.

Listen. Examine his positions. Try to get past stupid things like the Alito remark. Try to remember that Reagan put liberal justices in the Supreme Court who have proved disastrous for conservatives.

Just listen. And no matter how much you hate that “maverick” label on McCain, do your homework. Look at his votes. Pick up a rating sheet from one of the conservative watchdog groups and scrutinize his conservative rating.

Just. Listen.

…by the comment from Jackie C in California right here.

There is no higher honor I can be accorded than to have actually changed someone’s mind through my writing. None. Period. Except maybe being appointed Emperor of All Pants.

And…all in all, not a bad night for McCain, not a bad night at all, really…