Of course not. But that’s what lobbyists and lawmakers around the world are trying to shove down our throats with blind propaganda and obsolete moves.

Question: at a time when music was only performed by live bands, what kind of reception do you think phonographs received? “People are going to play the same music over and over! We live musician always improvise a little bit and will be out of business! It’s going to kill music!” It didn’t.

Fast forward to the invention of the radio. I’m sure the advent of a box that could broadcast music all over the world for no additional cost and without the intervention of an artist generated an outcry. And when audio cassettes came up, the industry whined that it helped hordes of shameless pirates record music, killing it as a result. It didn’t.

It’s time people learned not to listen to those alarmist cry babies. Of course they aren’t going to cheer the arrival of this (r)evolution: during a transition, only the smartest from the “before” will manage to make a buck in the “after”. Just remember that it doesn’t matter: by using their reasoning (change = bad), we wouldn’t have what we have - and love.

Music will always be alive and well; so will be the musicians. The people in the middle, peddling the stuff at a steep price, will have to adapt or disappear - it’s the golden rule of both evolution and business.

Wow, long time since I posted here! It’s also been a long time since I’ve talked about video games. Now is as good a time as ever to comment on FEAR 2. After all, I won’t finish the game anyway, so, let’s see.

I feel robbed. Last time it happened was when I bought Deus Ex 2. In the end, the story sort of made up to the dumbed up gameplay, and I manage to enjoy the game (like, 3 times). No such luck this time.

Hardcore fan of the first FEAR installment - that I wouldn’t hesitate to dub the best FPS I’ve ever played - I was expecting the same brutal gunfights, ruthless opponents and nerve-screeching downtimes from the sequel. If I was to only buy one game this year, then FEAR 2 it would be. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the FEAR formula had fell into the same grinder the Deus Ex franchise had. If by ‘fell’, I mean ‘intentionally dumped’.

From the horrible controls, I can only take away that maybe connecting a mouse where there was a gamepad is not enough to make it a PC game. You end up walking too slow, turning around too fast, disoriented and bumping into objects (including a mural tableau that prevented me  from moving along its supporting wall). Who needs virtual reality when FEAR 2 feels so close to the real deal (being drunk)?

The interface is also exactly what you’d expect on a console game: the gigantic icons reminding you what key/button to press to perform an action, just in case all players have Alzheimer’s. The savegame system is identical to the one in Gears of War, and I remember making a mental note of how appropriate it was in Gears, so that must be a good point, right? Nope. Because you and me don’t don’t play on console the same way we play on PC. When we play Gears, we just blast through levels, while FPS PC gamers tend to want to be ’stylish’ when playing: I personally want to look like a ballet dancer with an assault rifle. True story. I want my moves and kills to be efficient. Oh, and flashing a huge text in my face to tell me a door is locked before I even tried to open it isn’t helping me out, it’s just pulling me out of immersion.

Of course, all of this could have been prevented by Monolith pretty quickly/easily. To add insult to injury, this wasn’t even fixed in the first patch. Nor the second. Or the third. Historical fan bases don’t take to kindly to being ignored.

The final blow was delivered to me somewhere mid-campaign (I think): as I was quickly going through the game, fairly annoyed, but trying to find out more about the story, I got stuck at the I’m-a-console-game-so-here’s-a-mandatory-quicktime-event face-off. I went back and forth a couple of times during a hand-to-hand combat session that made me want to pull out my teeth. And gave up. Because it’s just NOT what I had payed for.

I feel relief, however, to have uncovered the truth about Alma’s screaming, crying and general tearing people in half: it is my understanding that in events smacked in between both installments, Alma discovered that she’s been adopted and that, not only was her adoptive father a bastard sick enough to induce his 8-year old daughter into labor for simple means of experimentation, but that her real progenitors were of an even worst kind: the kind that would steal her soul and trap it into a console Hell, where her distress will be mocked over and over again through eternity. Everyone will agree that it’s a pretty sucky way to start in life. Nothing short of burning the flesh off of such people’s bones would be considered a fair retribution.