phantom_leo said:

Are you trying to get my attention...?

In two strange coincidences: Today I found myself looking up Cubano Porn, only to find out that's where Vader's family is from a few minutes after, and, LITERALLY, just before hitting the button to come to the site this time, I had just searched the term "Jupiter's Cock" because I've seen it a few times at GameSpot.

I think what you're saying is that someone in Vader's family is a porn star who goes by the name of Jupiter's Cock?

Foolz said:

I think what you're saying is that someone in Vader's family is a porn star who goes by the name of Jupiter's Cock?

Ok, so its Sunday and I plan on doing some gaming today. I've been playing:

• The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Game is awesome. Definitely one of the best games the Wii ever saw. Not surprising, right? Been slacking on it the last few days, but today I will play a good chunk. Level design, sound, character interaction, and pacing are as good as they've ever been in this series.

• Alpha Protocol

Started playing this out of curiosity yesterday, and so far I'm pleasantly surprised. I had heard it was horrible, but every other Obsidian developed game I've ever played has been great. So I waited for it to drop in price and grabbed it off Steam.

There's some good and some bad spots, and the game was obviously rushed out for a few reasons. One, that SEGA wanted the game done at a certain time, and two, that Obsidian needed to get focused on Fallout: New Vegas.

The bad is that the mouse/keyboard controls are horrible, which was totally unexpected. The game follows closely the Mass Effect/KOTOR blueprint, and ME has excellent M/KB controls so you'd think this game would be something like that. But it is obvious this game was designed for an Xbox pad as the KB layout is idiotic and half the time your inputs do not even register. I switched to my Xbox pad, and the controls are much much better. I guess I should have just bought the Xbox version.

Another bad part is the minigames. It has computer hacking, alarm stuff, cmaera and more..basically the kind of stuff Mass Effect has (which was also annoying in those games) but its 10 times worse in this game. Once you get the hang of it its ok, but never really enjoyable.

The good, though, is that again, the game follows the Mass Effect style. You gain all kinds of abilities, better weapons, armor and more as you level up, and the mission structure of the game, the characters, and the espionage vibe are all very well done. Must play more.

The only thing wrong with Skyward Sword was that it lost a bit of the epic atmosphere and story impetus from Twilight Princess. It was just about design, design, design design, design. In those terms it's possibly the best 3D zelda, if only they had upped the epic a bit.

The Wii U gamepad screen is much better than you think - Updated

I updated this, any feedback?

Punk Rebel Ecks said:

Alright. I have a lot of questions but I feel that it would be best if I told you about what I think of the country in a few paragraphs and then you can correct me with what I have wrong. In general I find it very difficult to find out things about Cuba. When I see articles about it they tend to either be really one sided. I don't quite believe that Cuba is North Korea, however I don't quite believe that the country is essentially a typical South American country. I figured that I could talk about people who have been or lived there but I find things to very incredibly.

Person 1: "Yeah I have family in Cuba they think its alright. The people there are nice."

Person 2: "Its Nazi Germany mixed with Haiti!"

I use to always lean toward what ever was worse because I figured "why would people lie or exaggerate?" I unfortunately discovered that people do tend to do this a lot in third world countries. Venezuela is a prime example of this as many of the right (who frequently post on GAF) make Chavez out to be a Socialist Hitler with him single handedly destroying the economy, but if you talk to more level headed Venezuelans (even those who do not like Chavez or his policies) they will tell you that things aren't as one sided as most people make it seem). I kind of suspect a few Cuban-Americans, at least on GAF, doing this. For example there was a thread in which someone named RogueHobbit (or something similar) kept talking about how the nation is in ruins, is a police state, everyone secretly hates it, and is light years behind other nations in the area. While I found his story to be a bit shocking I also noticed many inconsistencies with what he said. I recall for example that he stated that they have Stalinist secret police and if you say anything bad about the government you go to the reeducation camps. This was displayed false when a few months ago a poster from Cuba (verified by an admin) jumped in a thread and called out a poster praising him. But if they were that strict he never would have done that. If a North Korean had internet why would he talk shit about his regime? They wouldn't block his internet they'd kill him. There were other things that I found inconsistent as well.

Cuba's economy left on a high note when Castro over took it. But many forget that Cuba wasn't exactly peachy. Not only was aa third of the population was in poverty and a majority wasn't feeling the labors of the GDP growth but the leader was very brutal. Some ranging as someone who got his hands occasionally dirty to about as brutal as Castro. Of course this was a guy who, like everywhere else in the Carribean, was installed as a US puppet of interest. These things combined made peopleangry and thus the Communist movement was born. These words don't really come from me, but President John F. Kennedy. Like many Communist nations there were some benefits to the revolution such as the decrease in poverty and more access to healthcare, but overall Cuba completely failed to show that Communism was a better alternative to Capitalism as well as justified turning the nation into a totalitarian state.

Today I see the nation as a middling economic Carribean nation where people have good healthcare and literacy rate for the region but is overran by african dictator-like censorship and insane amount of government control. Even those "private" companies Cuba is setting up are still pretty much owned by the state. Make no mistake the nation isn't pulling a China, those companies are so monitored that the government gives people a LIST of what jobs and businesses they open up that the government decideds... The police state isn't nearly as bad as it use to be, and definitely isn't anywhere near where the United States portrays it. This doesn't say that they are free there because that's just laughable. The nation is pretty much living under an African dictator. You can casually tell people you may be unhappy with Castro but protest or hang anti-Communist stuff in the yard and you will go to jail. It isn't as harsh as some dictatorships but either way its still very wrong. There are also huge shortages of things in the nation. When you mix price controls with few trading partners you get mass shortages. To be fair though while people complain this makes many people actually be able to afford things. But I feel that there are alternatives to this. The people there also generally like Castro, but its not like they have any alternatives. People get content whereever they are. Then again people said the same about some Eastern block nations and it turns out there were something they missed after all. Then again they aren't Cuba. As far as the economy well I'd probably put Cuba in the middle pack of the carribean countries (most of which are third world). They also have a good education system for the region but whats the point if there aren't any jobs to utilize it? What are you going to do? Start a business? Go to a different country and work in the tech industry? Its sort of like the US and their university obsession when there are few jobs for 90% of the majors on the list.

So in short I see Cuba as a nation that had a revolution so it didn't become a puppet of the US to have its economy go to shit and have huge inequality (ala the route of every other Carribean nation) to...have the economy going to shit, having huge inequality, mass censorship (no cellphones? internets a rarity? all by choice of course), and a fascist state. But at least they have decent healthcare... I definitely agree that Cuba and Castro are definitely held up too high as being the ultimate evil. I mean the US is friends with notably worse countries such as Turkmenistan and does trading with Mynamar, who like Cuba, is "opening up" their economy. And I doubt the country could be that bad being that it allows tourists to enter it and they are working to losen travel restricts for its citizens. Other Latin American countries, even the standard ones like Brazil and Argentina complain that Cuba isn't involved isn't involved in certain organization because the US won't let them. But at the end of the day, if your best argument defending a nation is that its not worse than Turkmenistan or that its presenting inline with other third world countries, I don't think that excuses a dictatorship, especially one that goes against everything the initial revolution was suppose to be about, citizens having good teeth or bad teeth. Its really sad seeing people defend this man. Just as its sad seeing people defend countries like Haiti signing deals with American corporations while the money is extracted to the leaders, business owners, and government officials. Its crazy how much people stick to their ideologies. Cuba needed an FDR like figure to bring the country into order. Instead they got a piece of shit. I find it amusing that if say a right wing Latin American government does something to fuck over unions the left screams, but if Chavez nationalizing TV stations or Castro keeps Fascism alive, not a peep. Then again the right is the same. No talk about how the previous Venezuelan president pratically banned protest (Chavez has reallowed them) or how corporations fuck over countries like Haiti. Or how about Columbia which has "social cleansing" squads that are set to kill homeless people (even children) and have sent them to the sewer where they still hunt them down. God this world is fucked.




Is this an accurate assessment of the country?

Nice job man, you are pretty much spot on.

There are almost two versions of Cuba I formed in my head growing up. The one my grandparents and parents lived through which of course was described as a nightmare, they left in the late 60s though. Now having spoken to many more Cubans of late there is a new picture of a country that is simply a bit poor but does have a lot of benefits as you pointed out and many people are generally content living there. Obviously the revoltion was horrible, I know the Cuban people were not happy with Batista, we know he was a US puppet and that is why the revolution began. But I am sure they did not have in mind what Castro did, first off jailing or straight up killing anyone involved with the previous government. You dared speak against Castro off to jail you go or to a killing range. Your property, not yours anymore everything belongs to the government.  Everything became rationed, my mom would tell me stories of having to wait in line all day to get your weeks allowance of rice, meet, and milk. Clealy the country was so bad that people would throw themselves into the ocean and risk their lives just to get out. I think a lot of this had to do with Cuba being a very well developed country, it was the golden pearl of the carribean, a place of luxuary. So all these citizens who had high placing jobs, who worked all their live to make a living for their family freaked out when it was all taken away. This isnt like Haiti where its just been a poor country forever, these people had their lively hood taken away which drove them out, mostly to Miami.  

So those are the stories I heard growing up, my grandparents lost their homes because of Castro. Some family stayed behind and they would communicate with letters and sometimes on the phone. Well years and years go by, the US sanctions amoung other things really make the country poor and its almost like some car museum where you find cars from the 60s everywhere. A few years ago my sister met a friend who recently came from Cuba and still had her whole family there. Since that time my sister went with her and visted Cuba to see her friends family and some of ours.  This paints the other version of Cuba I know now, one where its not that bad at all, just a bit more poor than us. They have internet, computers, video games, TV, etc. This kind of came to shock cause I had this horrible version of Cuba stuck in my head but when I met my sisters friends brother he had an Xbox and loved playing Halo. Now my sister emails our distant cousins who live there. They eat fine for the most part, they dont have the crazy supermarkets we do but its not like before. And what I find is that some of them are simply happy living there. Most of my family that stayed back choose to stay, thats their home, they are content.

I witnessed the arrival of that friends brother to the states, he marveled at the extravagance we live in. Giant HDTVs, expensive cars, electronic stores with everything you can think of. That said he felt kind of lost cause our way of live is different, more private. Recently their mom came to visit them and I had a chance to meet her and asked her straight up so how do you like it here and she said I like it home better. She told me here everyone lives behind their fences, everyone to themselves. She misses being able to walk the street and talk to her neighbors. She talked about Cuba so much, clearly she loves it there and will not leave but she wanted her children to have a better life for themselves as much as that hurt. But they skype, they talk on the phone. At this point Cuba is just a poor country, no where close to some of the horrors of other third world countries.

As for the government it almost seems to me like they are just doing what they are doing cause those are the way things where. Raul Castro has been loosening up many of the restrictions but it remains a communist state even though clearly that did not work. The Cuban people are content cause no one has even attempted a new revolution, most people get up and leave rather than fight for their country. So basically that is what I see, the older generations of cubans that came to Miami harbor a huge hatred of Castro, the shithead dictator who ruined the country. Now they did live through some horrible things, that is not made up but I dont think it continues to this day. The Cubans that stayed behind still hate Castro but are content living their lives within the means they live in. And as you pointed out they live much better than a third world country.

The reads on Cuba were very interesting changes of pace here.

Played some Jak & Daxter and Ratchet & Clank on PS3. Damn, these games look good in HD. It's hard to believe these were originally PS2 games.

Ravenprose said:

Played some Jak & Daxter and Ratchet & Clank on PS3. Damn, these games look good in HD. It's hard to believe these were originally PS2 games.

Can you imagine if Wii games looked like that, but noooo.

Dvader said:

I have not found one cuban that has ever said they like their government, like Castro, or communism.

Think of this, they live 90 miles from the country that signifies freedom and dream to be who you want. I bet almost every family in Cuba knows someone who has come to the US. They are tied together and the differences are pretty big.