vrage

I still agree with Jeff’s initial sentiment at CGlVs relaunch: It’s the ease of use and connectivity in Vista that will really push PC gaming, and it’s just not there yet. The hardcore will always snub their noses at the idea that improved ease of use constitutes innovation, but everything from the iPod to WOW proves the contrary; let’s hope Microsoft at least makes good on rectifying the embarrassment that the current ideal online environment is a console one.

Personally I’m one of the traitorous legions on a MacBook Pro, but I still love getting GFW on a monthly basis. I do have a copy of XP that’s been sitting on my shelf for a month, yearning for dualboot, but the day that I need more gaming than the combined forces of WOW and Civilization 4 can provide will be…what’s Heilgate’s launch date again?

I just read Bruce Geryk’s review of the Civilization IV: Warlords expansion. I am glad to see that I was not the only one who found the inclusion of Joseph Stalin in that expansion to be of “questionable taste.”

As a Russian-American whose family was directly affected by Stalin’s purges, frankly I find Stalin’s inclusion as a leader of the Russian civilization to be patently offensive, t was glad that Stalin and other Bolshevik leaders haven’t been present in recent incarnations of Civilization, which makes sense anyway, considering that under the Bolsheviks, Russia ceased to exist as an independent state until it regained independence in 1991.

So not only did Stalin not lead ‘Russia” as such, but he wasn’t even Russian - he was Georgian.

I understand that, given the expansion’s Warlords name, Firaxis Games wanted to include a leader who could be considered a ‘warlord.” But as Bruce pointed out, they wisely didn’t include Adolf Hitler for Germany - so why include Stalin, who was no better than Hitler? If they wanted a Russian warlord, Firaxis could have included one of the Russian Grand Princes like Alexander Nevsky or Dmitri Donskoy. whose names aren’t associated with the deaths of tens of millions of people. I wouldn’t have had a problem if this expansion was specifically devoted to WWII, in which case the inclusion of Stalin and Hitler would have been accurate for historical reasons, but having Stalin as the leader of Russia in an overall context is irresponsible - and I certainly won’t be buying that expansion unless Firaxis issues a patch to remove Stalin.