Professor Video Games

I retract my previous complaint about dancing.

My in depth analysis of Viridiana is as follows: This movie is fucked up. On the ending: I loved that last scene. Jorge's power over both the women is...I don't know if I'd call it disturbing, but maybe unnerving? And the final shot pulling out of the bedroom and the subtly implied menage a trios...so, so good. I'm glad it was that ending and not the more direct one originally planned. Oh and I liked the scene where Viridiana is praying with the peasants and it's intercut with shots of the home demolition/renovation of the house. She's naively trying to save these poor folks while Jorge begins his modernization of the estate. I guess we see later how that works out for each of them...

The jalapeno ones are like fucking heroine. If I buy a bag it lasts two days, max.

The D-pad maps to four emotes. Wave, point, sit, and (sigh) dance. I think all four serve a useful purpose as far as quick communication with other characters without having to speak or type, though I'll be the first to admit I wish they'd gone with some other sort of celebration action instead of some goofy ass dance that feels really out of place.

Curious what the success rate of "you've gotta cut that from the pocast" requests is...

It wouldn't be out of control in Olly would just become your friend. This is his fault really. And J Allard's. And Chris Remo's.

I played through all the story missions by myself and it was fine. Like JonCole said, it's a LOT like Halo, so if you enjoy that, you'll be fine. No way to know how solo-friendly the later game content will be though. I hope it keeps up because like you I usually only have an hour or so in the evenings to play games and I don't want to have to coordinate with others because I'm a selfish person. Oh, I really like how a beam of light shoots out of baddies' (now headless) necks when you kill them with a headshot. Good/satisfying feedback.

Yup, I used all the advice in this thread to become friends with Olly! In your face Mington!

From that wikipedia article: Nice.

It's really interesting how you take your loadout directly into PvP. I skimmed some of the Something Awful thread for this game and there was talk of one or two guns and the Titan class being much better suited to PvP than others. It seems like long term balancing with this approach will be a big challenge...curious to see how it develops.

I've had fun with my time as well. The combat feels good and the progression seems interesting, at least from the little bit we've been exposed to. I like that there's a good variety of enemy types with different AI. And having these kinda instanced overworld areas allows for some off the cuff coop without needing to actually team up with anyone if you don't want. I do think takes a bit too long to move between the city and the combat areas...why do I need to go back to orbit (and the load times that go with it) before starting my next mission? Especially when the next mission starts me in the exact same Earth overworld area. Really the city in general seemed dumb to me...like some weird MMO holdover that's purpose could be served easier and quicker by some menus. I too am TERRIBLE at PvP. I feel I can put a little blame on rust, but then I was never great at Halo either (whatever that rank was in Halo 3 that you'd top out at if you sucked...that was me), so I know it can't be the deciding factor for me on getting this, because I'd only end up frustrated. But even with my lack of skills, it's overall been a lot more enjoyable than I expected. I was just playing the beta on a whim and am now pretty strongly considering picking the full game up.

Having been sent an unsolicited PS4 beta key from Sony I'm giving this a shot now. PSN ID is spork_armada. We'll see how this goes...

7:44 p.m. No. 28 of the 30 mozzarella sticks I have received so far still has a tiny piece of plastic wrap on it, which will absolutely not negatively affect the taste.

There are five people out there who just learned a $10,000 life lesson. Ouch. Personally, the more ambitious the project, the more experienced the dev team behind it needs to be before I'd consider giving them anything. And here we have some giant customizable open world Minecraft killer. Oh what's that? This is the first project for this studio and the kickstarter page has zero details on the individual members' past experience? Sadly, I can't say I'm terribly surprised.

Every mother's dream!

But remember, if you pick something I don't like (or even worse, something I deem lame), I'll hold it against you forever. But seriously, my selfish preference would be for something in English, though I assume that within this collection that might be a bit limiting.

Well now I don't know what that guy's deal is.

Can Wario physically close his mouth? I have watched multiple Wario-centric videos...nothing but teeth grinding. It's like he doesn't have lips or something. Maybe that's why he's so angry.

Yeah the undercurrents of the war are pretty interesting. There's these tangential conversations about sons being lost in the war (which kinda leads to the old guys getting drunk) or the comment that their hometown was spared bombing. I'd say everyone's still a bit shellshocked...maybe that's why the adults are so eager to get back to their day to day routines. They need that normalcy.

Ok I finally had some time to watch this one so here are some rambling thoughts. I liked it more than my previous viewing many years ago, which I credit to being older, though it's still a bit of a slog at times. It's 99% static shots, which goes pretty far at keeping the movie's energy level to a minimum. Obviously that's deliberate, but it can make watching a challenge sometimes. I think the only two tracking shots are when the grandparents are essentially kicked out and they're eating lunch alone in the park. There was also a lot of talking directly at the camera, which I didn't really get. Was it supposed to be like they were addressing the audience? Mostly I found it distracting. Roderick, I think you're being a little too hard on the grandparents. I thought they were pretty open with one another. For example, they had discussions about their disappointment with their children and their frustrations with the hotel experience. Seemed more like it was just with everyone else that they did all the smiling and nodding, like upon returning from the hotel or that last scene where the grandfather and neighbor happily discuss how insanely lonely he's about to be. Yes, that certainly is nice...being alone and having children who wished you had died first. But I wouldn't say the movie was so much moralizing as simply observing how easy it is to get wrapped up in ones own life and to ignore things that have become so familiar...the movie doesn't portray the kids as bad people, just oblivious. At the funeral the one daughter mentions how great a time the parents had in Tokyo and how nice it was to have them there. Like she's completely forgotten the fact that she spent most of her time handing them off to others or sending them off alone, even if she meant well when she did those things. They're just too wrapped up in their own mundane lives to realize they're being jerks and the parents are too polite to speak up. Not that being so oblivious is ok...they're still jerks. Maybe the lack of familiarity is why the only real open exchanges are between the grandparents and the widowed daughter-in-law...people that aren't even really related and so in some way, are more considerate of each other. Oh and maybe this was a translation issue, but at one point the grandmother has a line that's something like "I sure am excited to sleep in my dead son's bed." Uh...what?

If I saw someone doing this I'd most definitely give them a wedgie and/or swirlie

Yeah I could do two weeks. It's not even about getting through the list as much as it's having time to sit down and watch the movie. Like this time I've been busy all week and I think having an extra potential weekend for watching would be good.

He took my ring-sound advice though. Two thumbs up.

Can you do some sort of software reset on it? Maybe some table or somesuch in there has gotten corrupted.

I've never seen a team so thoroughly obliterated. In a World Cup semifinal no less! TheLastBaron is right though. They were lucky to make it out of the group stage and failed to impress the whole way through. That game against Columbia was straight up awful. But even still I would never predict a route like that.