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Control (the video game)

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Probably the hardest thing to deal with in regards to this game is it’s title. If I want to find something in, say, Borderlands, I just search for “Borderlands s-” and the search engine usually autofills what I’m looking for. However, with Control, even trying to control the search by typing something like “Control video game chest behind bars in Warehouse” would give a bunch of false hits, in this case for chest exercise control.

Anyway, the woman-with-paranormal-powers art for the game pretty much says it all. You travel around a building that is home to a Federal agency tasked with investigating and mitigating supernatural events while acquiring Jedi-like powers to defeat an inter-dimensional evil that threatens the operation. Yes, before you ask, all of the standard PC story elements of the day are in here: The tough as nails female black security chief, expert in their field women scientists, the stodgy white guys holding back the organization, “mystery meat” characters who are supposed to check a bunch of boxes at once, etc.

Unlike other games though, it is just PC window dressing for what is an otherwise well designed game and is a bit of a nostalgia trip for an old tech hand like me. The office is stocked with the best tech the late 70s and early 80s had to offer wrapped up in an X-Files-like feel. The office design features a huge vacuum tube mail system, reel-to-reel audio decks, copiers the size of small cars, and one of my personal favorites the vending machine for smokes that features a pack of smokes with a gun for a logo:

Even the horse in the logo is having a smoke

Although the overall design is a little gloomy, the designers went with varying wide and narrow approaches, never letting the game get too dark and cramped (and thus unpleasant to play). This was even more apparent in the DLC where an inter-dimensional rift causes some areas to be as if they’re inside of a florescent bulb even though the whole thing takes place deep underground. The controls are tight and at higher levels it gets to be a blast sawing through waves of enemies with your super powers, or, at least it used to be…

I had taken a break between finishing the game and awaiting the DLC and in the interim various changes were made, the mods/upgrades I was using were stripped off of my character (and “nerfed” if I had to guess) and enemies were scaled higher in difficulty. In playing the DLC it reminded of one of the most grating design issues with the original game: although the individual pieces worked great, I got the feeling the game was not sufficiently play tested from beginning to end. There would be missions that were pretty normal in difficulty, then almost impossible, then sleepwalk easy, and it didn’t seem like there was any rhythm to it: a chapter ending boss might be a cakewalk only for you to be stomped by peons the very next section.

Aggravating that it can be at times I did have a hard time putting down the game. The mix of powers gelled well, some of the NPCs, especially Dr. Darling and Emily Pope, made up for your character’s cardboard personality, and the huge trove of interdependent lore in various formats brought the game-world alive in a very personal way. Three and a half stars, it’s great in a lot of ways but it’s not for everyone.

Blank Slate-ism

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Over at the (very) nominally conservative web site Washington Examiner they have an opinion piece titled To Save Black Children, Abolish Teachers Unions. The post serves as a great example of BigCon siding with the left on all of their talking points in order to try and score points against a political enemy (in this case teacher’s unions).

Now, there’s A LOT wrong with that article, but it boils down to the turn of phrase “Accidents of birth” used in the article. Does the writer really believe that? That there is no difference between his own kid and that of some stranger? The fact that he cites absolutely nothing to back up his claim that teacher’s unions are the cause of failed schools makes the whole article even more hollow.

Of course facts don’t matter much in this regard, just “feeling” and the feeling goes that with just the correct inputs any racial group can achieve whatever any other racial group desires to achieve. Never mind that they’ve been playing with the stupid inputs for decades to no avail (blacks haven’t been turned into whites, and whites haven’t been turned into Koreans, not that anyone even asked if they desired to do so). And what do they hope to achieve, what does the author of the Washington Examiner piece hope will happen by eliminating teacher unions? The writer points out that “[Failed Baltimore city schools] actually got 50% more funding than the world’s widely agreed-to-be-best school system in the world, in Finland“.

Let’s…first ignore the fact that he fails to mention that teachers in Finland are also unionized. Beyond that, is it his contention that if we switched the students in Baltimore with those in Finland that the black American students will succeed and the Finnish students will fail? Does anyone actually believe such a thing? Well, yes they do obviously, but still isn’t it easier to believe that it’s not funding, or teachers, or administrators that make a school “bad”, but that it’s the students, and by extension, the parents (and their parents and so on)? That’s even sitting aside the possible fact that both groups are getting what they desire from the system that they use (thus muddying the idea of “failing” and “succeeding”).

An additional quibble along those lines, blank slate-ism is flat out demeaning to higher achieving people (and it’s meant to be). Do Chinese students succeed because they go to school on Saturday? Or is it because they are descended from generations of people who prioritized such achievements? Are (native) German engineers the result of some trade school program, or thousands of years of efforts to make a better people? It’s just insulting to say that “magic dirt” is all it takes in order to make a people that are more likely to be exceptional, rather than the long history of efforts by their ancestors to make a better people.

Sportsball

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I always watched NFL games with my dad, but had given it up when I moved out. I don’t remember the exact reasons; yeah I’d promised my wife I wouldn’t be a sports nut, but it might not have mattered since where we moved to had poor TV reception and I couldn’t watch the games if I wanted too (and, ’90s era Bengals, right?).

Several years later I had one of the most awkward job interviews ever, for an off-hours IT support position. I asked the manager what job duties I would be expected to perform when I was there and she did her best pep talk to avoid saying: “nothing”. So, after using the time to study for several Microsoft certifications (MCSE was all the rage at the time) and then playing all the Quake I cared to I fired up a black and white TV that another off-hours guy had brought in. The only thing on? Football.

Well I was re-hooked, as the years passed I would hang on to every broadcast including the vapid combines and 6th round draft picks (“Tom Brady was picked in the 6th round!!”). Super Bowl parties, day long beer fests, BW3 Sunday Ticket binges, all good fun or, a decent distraction at least I suppose. But, then the concussion protocols hit and the games were a mess with the victor often being determined by the officiating crew. About halfway through that season I gave up: the product was crap. The “hands up, don’t shoot” protests the following season cemented the death of the NFL in my mind, though apparently there was still a bottomless bit of white fools who didn’t mind turning their money over to an organization that hated them in exchange for a nearly unwatchable product.

Thing was, voicing my dislike would come off as banal. “Did you know a white guy was nearly kicked out of the league for using the ‘N’ word while Ray Lewis, who killed someone, was hailed as a hero?”. And then there’s Micheal Vick, whose rehabilitation story I believed for some reason, but going over his treatments of dogs should be enough to get any right minded person to swear off the NFL forever all by itself. I know though that all those (and more) are anecdotal one-offs and unlikely to sway the brainwashed normie so I would cop out by claiming the games were crap (which, they were).

Recent events though have made my hatred of anti-white organizations even easier. There’s many to pick from to be sure, but the NFL is basically doubling down on stupid from their efforts from yesteryear. While the NFL makes players remove (very) faintly pro-white tattoos they ship money off to pro-black criminal groups. While endorsing players doing their best to disrespect the nation (such as it is), they railroad others who aren’t too keen on the idea.

College football is as bad or worse (taking criticisms on race relations from a group that keeps their employees in indentured servitude is…off-putting), one step at a time I suppose. At least now when someone asks me if I watched such-and-such NFL event I can get an odd(er) look on my face say “no, they’re anti-white”.

If the NFL was, say, anti-Asian, can you imagine a Chinese person asking another Chinese person if they watched “the game”? No, they’d hide in their shame. It’s a long forgotten lesson but that’s where we need to get to, we need to build our communities around organizations that don’t have it in for us.