Opinion
LangleyAdvance
| Thursday, September 20, 2012 |
A8
Our View
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Evil disease affects us all
Cancer sucks. It sucks life out of its victims: the men, women, youth, and children who fight the disease to their last, laboured breath. It sucks hope and happiness from the loved ones left behind, the friends and family members who have to muster the will to collect the remnants of their shattered lives and move forward. Cancer doesn’t care. It doesn’t care whom it attacks – the elderly, the frail, teenagers in peak health before the disease washes through their bodies like a tsunami… it attacks good people, in some cases bad people. Cancer targets babies and toddlers too young to comprehend that it is about to sweep their young lives out from under them. It killed Terry Fox, who ran for cancer research, close to 42 kilometres a day through Canada’s Atlantic provinces, Quebec, and Ontario in 1980 before the disease spread into his lungs. It’s killed millions worldwide. Maybe cancer stole the life of someone you know, someone you love. Cancer patients and those close to them have support. Scientists, researchers, and oncologists, and hospice workers: they’re the ones searching for a cure, helping victims in the throes of the disease, and finally helping them find a little bit of comfort, a little bit of peace, as they live out their last days. Cancer has lots of enemies. Nearly 300 of its adversaries banded together in Langley City Sunday morning. At the same time, 125 more were in Walnut Grove. Through the combined efforts of the Langleys’ two Terry Fox Runs, roughly $14,000 will go to cancer research. As Terry Fox demonstrated 32 years ago, every step counts in the hope of one day making this sinister disease history, once and for all. – T.L.
Your View
Advance Poll…
Should Golden Ears Bridge tolls be the same as Port Mann’s?
Vote at… www.langleyadvance.com Last week’s question… Do MLA retirement plans mark the demise of BC Liberals, or just Christy Clark? Voters should jump ship with the rats. 27.59 % Only the bad weeds are leaving.
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Will they all return in another party?
6.90 %
Don’t care. All parties are the same.
27.59 %
My vote is already decided.
31.03 %
Opinion
Don’t think about video games! Painful truth
If you have no other responsibilities, you only get up because your backside’s gone to sleep and your bladder is full. I’ve recently been playing a resource management game, one of the most notoriously Matthew Claxton slow games in the world. mclaxton@langleyadvance.com The Settlers is a European game with a long string of titles, and it moves about as fast as I generally only play one kind of video game. molasses in mid-winter in Winnipeg. You start It’s the kind that involves a set of crosshairs in out as the proud possessor of a tiny slice of land. Hey, build a mine! Okay, I’ll mine some the middle of the screen, and near the bottom copper. Okay, build a factory to make tools of the screen cluster the icons showing how from the copper! Okay. Also, you’ll need to much ammo you have left, and how profusely fell some trees, quarry some stone… better set you’re bleeding. aside some of your metal for swords! These games are often deeply, deeply stupid It’s here that The Settlers’ slow pace runs when it comes to plot. You want me to go smack into the brick wall of its through these alien canyons and story. Your settlement is surget repeatedly shot at by Mad MaxOH MY GOD rounded by “bandits.” You’re esque bandits? Why am I walktold that these are mean, vicious THAT THING’S ing? Isn’t it the future? Where’s brutes, in need of killing. my spaceship or my jetpack or my COMING TO EAT Except, that’s clearly not true. hoverbike – OH MY GOD THAT MY FACE! The bandits never actually attack THING’S COMING TO EAT MY you. They don’t even pilfer your FACE KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT! supplies. They stay on their own As you can see, these games turf, until you need to expand. Then you send avoid allowing their players too much time for waves of soldiers to wipe out their “camps.” introspection. Get to the next checkpoint, grab A couple of weeks into playing, I realized the ammo, frag the next bad guy, repeat until the makers had unintentionally (I hope it you have created a pile of digital corpses the was unintentional) created a game of colonial height of the Chrysler Building. exploitation and mass slaughter. I’m controlA handful of games encourage thought. ling settlers wiping out indigenous people. Games like the very simple, short game You wouldn’t think a game made by Journey actually gave me more pleasure and Germans would be all about lebensraum. jazzed up my brain more than a hundred And then I realized that most of my games hours of playing shooters. In Journey, you are this… person. A hooded, encourage me to kill everyone in sight, but the armless, genderless thingy, you are in a desert. other games move too fast for thought. I’m not saying that games like this cause You travel towards a glowing mountain in the people to become violent or desensitized. And distance. You can meet another almost-identithere is a place for brainless-but-engaging cal pilgrim along the way. And there are puzaction games. zles to solve and a story about how the land But I’ve had a fair amount of fun with my became a desert, and an ending that… well, I thin Settlers plot now that I know I’m an suggest you play it. Do it with another person. evil conqueror. I’m coming to terms with the Of course I’ve spent a lot more time playing notion that my empire will crush all opponshooters than games like Journey. ents. Why? Probably because that heightened It’s not the plot they picked, but they let me sense of artificial danger is mildly addictive think about it too much. and tends to block out the passage of time.
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