Something about sex: It's only obscene if you
ain't got that green

_{[Editor's Note: We're not just a (rad) news site -- we also publish opinions/editorials from our community & employees like this one, though be aware that it may not jive with the opinions of Destructoid as a whole, or how our moms raised us. Want to post your own article in response? Publish it now on our community blogs.]}

It's a sad fact of life, but cold hard cash is the ultimate caveat. The truth is, almost any rule can be circumvented if Benjamin Franklin is a member of the negotiating team.

A little paper pressed discretely into the palm gets you past the velvet rope at the club while the masses stand and gripe. A high-dollar attorney turns jail time into community service. Even in the Middle Ages, indulgences meant carte blanche on all the deadly sins you could get on the scoreboard; a vigorous jingle of your coin purse was like shaking the Etch-a-Sketch of your soul back into a blissful tabula rasa.

When it comes to moral standards in digital entertainment, the game is no different. There's one set of rules for the heavy hitters; meanwhile, everyone else is told to "do as I say, not as I let those other guys do."

Apple recently revealed their Janus-like visage to iPhone game developers and other app creators when over 5000 apps were pulled from the iTunes store due to "objectionable content". When asked by affected app developers what criteria was used to determine the suitability of app content, they were provided with the following guidelines:

No images of women in bikinis.
No images of men in bikinis.
No skin.
No silhouettes that indicate that Wobble can be used for wobbling boobs.
No sexual connotations or innuendo: boobs, babes, booty, sex.
Nothing that can be sexually arousing.
No apps will be approved that in any way imply sexual content.

According to a spokesperson, Apple was receiving complaints from women who "found the content getting "too degrading and objectionable" along with parents who had issues with what their children were able to access via the iTunes store.



_{Now we know why it wasn't released on the iPhone.}

Now, we all have different opinions about what is and isn't objectionable. Wherever you lie on that spectrum, however, it can't be disputed that Apple has the right to structure and restrict content as they see fit. If they choose to refuse certain app or game content in order to pursue or retain a family/PC sensitive demographic, I can at least understand the move, even if I don't agree with it.

The problem is this: while thousands of independent app and game developers were negatively affected in many ways, the media giants who also run with the skin-peddling pack have received no rebuke or mandate to alter their content whatsoever.

Playboy's app? Un-pulled and uncensored; I suppose the fact that they are female bunnies and not actual human women means that the app is free from "degrading and objectionable" content. No different than watching Animal Planet, really.

Victoria's Secret's app? Still happily providing release to teenagers everywhere who know that iPhone screen protectors aren't just to keep dust out.

GQ, FHM, and Sports Illustrated? Apparently, their bikini and lingerie shots with women staring demurely back over their own asses at me aren't actually sexual because the objectification has a recognizable brand name slapped on it.



_{Truly, they are paragons of virtue.}

So Apple gets to have their cake and eat it too. They get to look wholesome for making an example of the pervy little guys as they play Puritan for street cred with the moral majority. At the same time, the "smut" producers with clout get out of Apple's bed, zip up their pants, and leave a fat envelope on the nightstand as they tiptoe out the back.

The individuals at Apple enforcing this decision are no different than crooked cops who make a public show of busting the guy slinging dime bags on the quad for college money so that they can keep accepting bribes from the heroin syndicate without losing their jobs.

By this point, you may be asking yourself why you should even care. This content purge apparently doesn't affect you much as a gamer, even if you play primarily on an iPhone. You weren't going to buy the wobbly boob app anyway, right? ... RIGHT?

To a certain extent, I agree with that mentality. A guy who was apparently weaned too soon being denied his ability to use accelerometer technology to reclaim his lost youth via unstable mammaries is hardly deserving of a march on Washington. I personally think the majority of the content getting cut from the iTunes store in this move, gaming or otherwise, is almost entirely lacking in merit.

That being said, the issue here is not the few iPhone games being impacted in the moment, but rather the precedent that is being set. The model that Apple uses to generate revenue with the iTunes store is being studied by all the major players in the game industry as it moves inexorably towards a future driven by digital distribution.



_{Fair and just application of moral standards!}

As gaming giants continually look to maximize profits by broadening their appeal, the danger of in-game content being more directly impacted by these sorts of two-faced initiatives over time is tangible. The message that this type of event sends independent developers is clear. Bioware may have the muscle to stand up for their sideboob against the platform proctors, but you do not.

The types of boundary pushing and unapologetic exploration of mature themes that are most prevalent in the independent realm are subtly undermined by the implicit threat that a small timer's meal ticket may be revoked at any moment. For those that value the evolutionary impetus that the true risk-takers provide for the gaming industry, the potential impacts of these hypocrisies and double-standards are clear.

For the rest of you, there may be no cause for immediate alarm, but remember -- the road to hell is paved with good exceptions.

_{This promoted blog was written for our March Monthly Musing assignment, "Write something about sex." You too could get promoted if you write something about sex in videogames over on the Community Blogs.}

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Another World

Another World, or, as it's known in North America, Out of This World, is a stunning example of storytelling in a video game originally released in 1991 (and re-released with better visuals in 2006) by Eric Chahi. Built as a cinematic platform adventure, you take on the role of Lester Knight Chaykin, a young physicist who is teleported to a barren alien planet while running an experiment using a particle accelerator. You soon make friends with one of the humanoid aliens and together work your way through the subterranean environments trying to escape with your lives!

Read The Full Article:
http://jayisgames.com/archives/2010/03/another_world.php

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Miyamoto confirms Pikmin 3 development

Let's dial the wayback machine to 2008.  E3 was in full swing, and Nintendo's in-house deity Shigeru Miyamoto quietly leaks the news that his team was "making Pikmin."  Jog ahead one year, and Nintendo releases New Play Control Pikmin -- a port of the GameCube original with controls specially designed for the Wii.

You'll get no complaints from me -- heck, I even included it in my Top 9 of 09 over at Toronto Thumbs.  But if they were simply "making Pikmin" and a new Pikmin game came out, that means there probably was no Pikmin 3 to start with ...right?

Not so!  The Official Nintendo UK Magazine was harrassing the earthbound god (not to be confused with the Earthbound god Shigesato Itoi) and got confirmation that Pikmin 3 development was "well under way."

Rejoice, fellow flower people!  It looks like Captain Olimar has at least one more adventure on his flight manifest after all.

[via @onm_UK on Twitter]

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Review: Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the
Moon

How do you review a game that has simultaneously brought you endless frustration and endless wonder? A game that has made you want to throw the controller and keep your eyes glued to the screen with a dropped jaw all at once? Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon is a conundrum. A deep, dark, desolate and thoroughly beautiful experience married to an aggravating, repetitive and lacking game. 

Fragile Dreams is brilliant. It is also quite bad. Yet it is also very good. 

How do you review a game like this? Very much like this game's intrepid hero, Seto, you just keep walking aimlessly in the dark and hope you find something. Then you get kicked in the back by a giggling pair of ghost legs that appeared out of nowhere. 

Did I mention this game is weird as Hell, too? Read on as we try to review Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon. 

Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon (Wii) 
Developer: tri-Crescendo, Namco
Publisher: Xseed Games
Released: March 16, 2010
MSRP: $49.99

Fragile Dreams is difficult to categorize, as it straddles genres and always manages to elude an accurate pigeonhole. It is part action/adventure, part JRPG, part survival horror and part art game all rolled into one. It tells the tale of a young boy named Seto who finds himself alone in a world where most of humanity has died and everything it built has been left in ruin. The one man he ever knew has passed away, and so he sets out on a journey to find more survivors and share his life with someone other than himself.

Fragile Dreams is all about the journey, and it's one of the saddest journeys ever seen in a videogame. Its tale is a tragic one, and as the game's story is drip fed to the player, as Seto encounters a range of eccentric characters and suffers the loss of their brief company, only a player with a heart of stone could experience it and not feel something. The most amazing thing is how some of the game's saddest moments shouldn't be as depressing as they are. One very early scene, at the end of the first section, is unbelievably poignant, despite the fact we barely know the characters involved. 

It's an odd game, that is for certain, but not in a Killer 7 or Muscle March way. It's not wacky, or weird for the sake of weird. There's something deeper, darker and genuinely surprising about this humble little title. There are shocking moments in Fragile Dreams, but the game never forces those shocks with extreme plot twists or over-the-top action sequences. Instead, it possesses an astounding sense of subtlety, and is full of moments that you just don't see in other titles, helped along by the fact that everything about it is so intensely human. 

The game speaks out to some of our greatest fears, namely that of isolation and loneliness. Seto is a boy who just wants to be with someone. Stuck wandering alone in a world full of ghosts and memories, his desperation for a friend and his obsessive search for a girl he only briefly met set the stage for one of gaming's most engaging narratives. 

Unfortunately, so much time, effort and love was poured into the story that it seems none was left to spare for the gameplay.

Fragile Dreams is played mostly as a traditional action/adventure title with elements of horror and roleplaying thrown in. The majority of the game is spent wandering around various desolate locations, taking control of Seto as he searches for the first human girl he's ever met. The nunchuck is used to move Seto around while the Wii remote controls his torch, very much like the control scheme for Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. As he lights up the dismal areas with some impressive lighting effects, Seto will uncover items, creep across broken floors, read the memories of precious objects left behind, barter with a man in a giant chicken helmet, and fight an army of twisted and spooky ghosts.

The combat, by far Fragile Dreams' weakest element, is all handled with one button. As Seto encounters various ghosts and monstrosities on his travels, he'll employ all manner of improvised weapons to take them out. Attacking is handled entirely by the A button, with limited potential for combos and charge attacks based on the timing of the presses. Unfortunately, Seto fights exactly like the fifteen-year-old boy he is. Worse, in fact. His attacks are delayed, he has poor recovery after each hit, he can't target enemies properly, and he has zero defensive capabilities whatsoever. He can't block or dodge, despite the fact that the Z button is left idle throughout the entire game. Would it have killed the developers to throw in a dodge move for the Z button? Apparently so. 

The game isn't difficult. Health items are liberally thrown at the player and there are save points that fully replenish Seto's life. It's almost impossible to die for the vast majority of the game. However, fighting the various ghosts that usually hover out of attack range or sneak up from behind, is an absolute pain.

Fights take longer than they should because even the most common of enemies find ways to stay out of harm's way and drag out the already dull combat. A number of opponents frequently phase in and out of reality and take cheap shots from behind, while Seto simply lies back and takes it because he has no way to avoid most attacks. Many enemies stagger upon being hit with a strong attack, but their staggers send them high into the air or low to the ground, where Seto can't hit them, and they take far too long to get back into range. It's like everything in the game is stalling for time, and it grinds on one's nerves.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Seto's weapon can break, or rather, it will break. A lot. In fact, the further into the game you get, the more fragile Seto's weapons become. Broken weapons can only be thrown away, and players will need to buy new ones from a merchant who only randomly appears at save points when he feels like it. Carrying multiple weapons might sound like a good idea, but Seto has a ridiculously limited amount of item slots and his slots fill up quicker than Paris Hilton's on a Friday night. It gets absolutely ridiculous in the last chapter of the game, when Seto can't keep hold of a weapon for more than a handful of fights. I have no idea what tri-Crescendo were thinking with this idea.

That's not the worst of it, however. Nearly every single task Seto has to perform to advance the game's story is nothing but pointless, boring, totally unwarranted filler, to the point where it becomes an insult to the player's intelligence.

Inexcusably gratuitous backtracking, offensively dull fetch quests, and mind-numbing mini games make up half the gameplay, with the other half being ... nothing. Absolutely nothing. There are moments in this game, far too many moments in fact, where the player's time is thoroughly and infuriatingly wasted. Whether Seto is climbing down a ladder that takes almost ten full minutes to scale, or walking through long, repetitive corridors with nothing at the end of them, there are moments of sheer boredom that clearly exist only to bump the game's running time up, and feel like nothing but a slap in the face from the developers. 

It's only in the last hour that the game starts really throwing any new ideas on the table. Interesting bosses and fresh gameplay elements are crammed into the closing chapter, and it makes one wonder exactly why the ten-minute ladders and empty corridors were even necessary. It's simply flabbergasting that such an imaginative and clever game is also such a dull, uninspired and exasperating one.

Some of the things that Fragile Dreams makes the player do, some of the unfair demands on a gamer's time and energy, are completely inexcusable. There's no excuse for a fetch quest that sends you back through every area you've just cleared. There's no excuse for cumbersome and restricted item management. There's no excuse for weapons that break every five minutes. There's no excuse for vast sections of time spent doing nothing but walking along empty corridors or going down endless flights of stairs. There's no excuse for a room full of motion-tracking cameras that manage to detect you even when you're not in their field of vision and send you back to the beginning when you get caught (after forcing you into a fight that will make your weapon break). There is no excuse. Not for any of it. 

And yet ... I love this game. I love this insulting, infuriating waste of time. I will never, ever play Fragile Dreams again. However, I am intensely glad that I have played it once. For everything this game does wrong, and it does nearly everything wrong, it manages to make up for it with a sublime story, amazing characters and some of the most memorable scenes I have ever had the pleasure to witness. At times I truly did want to throw my controller and turn the Wii off. Yet I couldn't. I couldn't tear myself away because I was so hooked by this game's stellar narrative and the beautifully bleak and melancholic atmosphere of the whole experience. 

I want to give this game a high score. It deserves a high score simply for what it does as a piece of artistic entertainment. However, it also deserves to be criticized for the fact that it fails in so many blatant and unacceptable ways. A game can get only so far on a compelling story, no matter how emotionally engaging and unique it may be. Unfortunately, Fragile Dreams crosses far too many lines. So many that, eventually, the story cannot sustain the overall experience. 

Is Fragile Dreams worth playing? Absolutely, if you have the sheer willpower and patience to see it through. There is truly nothing quite like this game, on the Wii or anywhere else. However, the game makes so many unfair demands of the player and requires so much forgiveness that most won't want to stick with it. It's a horrible shame because the things that Fragile Dreams does right are done beautifully, and such a lovingly crafted world deserves so much better than to be forced into a poor game.

That's the biggest frustration with Fragile Dreams. That so much brilliance is let down by careless and slapdash game design. That a truly wonderful story is clouded by terrible combat, terrible quests and terrible wastes of time. That a title deserving nines, tens and nominations for game of the year has been relegated to the status of "alright" and "just about worth playing if you've got the stomach for it" thanks to things that not even the developers could have considered acceptable.

Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon is beautiful. I thank the developers for making it. I resent the developers for not making it good enough. 

Score: 6.0 -- Alright (6s may be slightly above average or simply inoffensive. Fans of the genre should enjoy them a bit, but a fair few will be left unfulfilled.)

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Game People Calling: Dr. Story Takes on Games

How do games fare when they're reviewed on their stories alone?

Comment | View Article

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Detective Conan - Desperate Attraction Escape

Detective Conan - Desperate Attraction Escape is another new Japanese point and click type room escape game. In this game, you try to find the items and solve the puzzles to escape the room. Language barrier may be a problem. Good luck and have fun!Play This Game

[[ This is a summary only. Visit EscapeGames24.com for game links, walkthroughs, comments, and more! ]]

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Question of the Day, March 21, 2010

The interconnectedness of all things.

Comment | View Article

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Deadly Premonition F .. K winners announced!

video details and more

Look with interest at these winners for our "F .. K in the coffee" Deadly Premonition contest. At the beginning of the week, we charged Destructoid readers with the task of FK'ing in their coffee for a chance to win a copy of Deadly Premonition for the Xbox 360, along with a promo poster. It was a hard fought contest, but we have finally picked three winners, haven't we Zach?

Here are the three winners that stood out, crisp as a clear spring morning:

• Shadowii: For randomness and EKANS
• Instant_Awesome: For being just too damn clever
• BeardedUnderdog: For the ridiculous video you see above

Congratulations to our winners and thank you for all taking part. If you are a winner, please use the Destructoid frontpage Private Message feature to send me a shipping address. Ignition will then send you your prizes. Be sure to keep reading Destructoid for more hot contests, too!

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Win some BioShock 2 DLC codes for the PS3!

BioShock 2's "Sinclair Solutions Test Pack" DLC offers new playable characters, a third weapon upgrade level, five more masks, 20 new trials and the level cap has been raised to 50. The extra content is going for $5 and we have ten codes to give away this weekend for the PlayStation 3 version of the game!

All you need to do to enter is leave a comment with either your favorite character, weapon or Plasmid ability that has appeared in either the original BioShock or in BioShock 2. You can enter as many times as you like and contest is open worldwide.

You have until Sunday at 11:59PM CDT to leave a comment below. Good luck!

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Best of the Network this week

Destructoid just turned four-years-old this past week. It's been a very wild ride and old man Niero shares with us some of the experiences he's had in the past few years running this crazy robotic beast.

On Destructoid, we present to you the most immature thing we've ever done at Destructoid. On Japanator, Japanator AM continues to rock out awesome episodes. And on Tomopop, the Miyazawa Model Exhibition 2010 contains some awesome figures.

DESTRUCTOID

• Gather around old man Niero: Destructoid turns four
• The most immature thing we've ever done: The Name Game
• Counterpoint: God of War III is too long, boring
• Bit Transmission episode 3
• Contest: Win some BioShock 2 DLC codes for the PS3!

JAPANATOR

• Japanator AM Episode 9: Special OPs
• JapanaTen: 10 Reasons why J-drama is better than plain TV
• Some breathing room: Tokyo anti-loli law vote postponed
• Japanator Radio 126
• The Four Laws of Moe

TOMOPOP

• Tomocast episode 8: Toys of Yesterday (and hot ninja turtles)
• Tomopop Review: Patch Together's Biting Pear
• Tomopop About Town: Megacon 2010 (NSFW)
• Miyazawa Model Exhibition 2010 Spring: Kotobukiya and Square Enix Products
• Miyazawa Model Exhibition 2010 Spring: MegaHouse, Wave, and Yamato

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