Probably Biased

Given that my previous post about personal life philosophies, Learn Something New Everyday , was so popular (my most popular post by far) I decided that perhaps it was time to discuss the second major life rule I try to live by: "to judge something I should first know it." This is an idea that I have only really quantified to myself in the last few years but is a philosophy that is quite dear to me. It is all too easy to see a poster, an advertisement or a quote and draw an opinion from that, file it away and never go any deeper or re-examine that first impression. I see many people express rather firm views on things they have really only judged from the most passing exposure and I have often found myself drawn to do the same. It is so much easier to let stereotypes and first impressions to the judging for us than to exert the intellectual work to properly investigate and examine something. In the most mundane sense this means I won't bash Twilight or the Hunger Ga...

Before I launch into this I'll just come out and say the following is far longer than I intended and much is given over to the story, character and plot issues I had with the game but if you can stomach the text I think what follows is worth the read for anyone interested in the series, so if you can try to get through it and let me know what you think! In a season of flops and disappointments with an aggravating amount of micro-transaction-pay-to-win rubbish creeping into mainstream gaming I never thought that Assassin's Creed would be included in that pile of disappointment. To be fair Assassin's Creed has had it's share of under-performing, disappointing titles lately. Unity was a buggy mess and Syndicate was just plain mediocre. However with Origins Ubisoft really seemed to be pulling out all the stops to release something truly spectacular and that was very much the expectation. At first Origins really did seem to be living up to the hype, the opening was ...

Of all the many life lessons I learned in my youth, drummed into my bones by my parents, common courtesy is one of the most important. I was always taught to be kind and respectful to the people around me, to be patient and understanding, to say please and thank you, to hold the door for strangers and all manner of other simple things that fall under the general definition of good manners. As a child I always assumed that these things were fairly universal life lessons but as I have gotten older it has become ever increasingly apparent that common courtesy and manners are no longer particularly common at all. That is not to say that I don't still see strangers holding doors and being polite, that still happens, the problem I see is that those instances are outweighed by the people I see being rude, self-centered, picky and nasty. The worst behavior I see almost invariably has to do with people being rude to food-service or cashier level workers. It seems that under the shield of ...