Frenetic Pony

Like I said, I invested as much time as anyone on the planet did for like 2 years of my life. And it's really not a big deal! Think of it this way. They COULD take an expanded universe story, and still make it crap! There's no guarantee that it would be good, and no guarantee that doing something original is bad. I.E. You're emotions are illogical, don't let them cloud your judgement. That way leads to the darkside of fanboyism

See there you go assuming. Get both, send one with the other, and that way you wont offend anyone!

Holy shit Derek Smart! Years ago on Shacknews, I'd known of him as the guy that "you summoned if you said his name 3 times." I did so once in a thread about him just to see if it worked. And he showed up! It was so fucking weird. Really actually showed up. Like, 10 minutes later, just his confirmed used screename of "Derek Smart" in that thread a few responses down. tl;dr I actually used the internet spell "Summon Derek Smart" and it worked!

To each their own I guess. I'm not saying it looks SUPER. It could definitely be put together better as a scene, from the perspective of lighting everything and composition. But it looks a LOT better than the original game did in clarity and shininess. And honestly just quadrupling texture resolution is quite easy and almost costless.

Meh, I practically lived and breathed Expanded Universe stuff when I was like 11-12. I had twenty something EU novels, sketches of stuff I did on my wall, I was as big a fanboy as you could find. But it's really for the best to just ignore that stuff. From an actual writing perspective Zahn's novels were the only thing really close to the original trilogy, and that being said better could still be done, and in a more movie like scope, scale, and style too. There's a difference between being a fan of that stuff and recognizing what's actually best for movies. And Thrawn wasn't really a good Star Wars movie bad guy. He was icy where Grand Moff Tarkin was egotistically haughty, Vader was imposing and dreadful, and the emperor was just plain cackling evil. A more melodramatic tone is definitely called for in Star Wars. The other thing with Star Wars is that the good guys are supposed to be outgunned and outmanned, and while I'm not sure how or if they'll manage that this time, it didn't really feel that way with Zahn's novels, which I'm sure most other people agreed were already the best of the Expanded Universe. So I don't see it as a terrible problem to ignore that stuff. PS please be good please be good please be good damnit!

All I keep hearing from devs is whining, whining, complaining that this new "Next Gen" will cost sooooo much more than last time yet again. That they've got to do blah blah blah to keep up with everyone, that creating yet another magnitude of complexity of assets is required. I call absolute bullshit. They've all just grown so used to "upping their game" that the thought that maybe assets are good enough doesn't even occur. That maybe, unlike Ryse and Second Son and whatever, you really don't necessarily need detailed facial capture of all your damned characters and etc. That just makes for more unplayable cutscenes with close ups in what is ostensibly a video GAME. And I'm pretty sure someone just proved my point beautifully by bringing in original 2007 Bioshock Assets, which looked like this: And then put them into Unreal Engine 4, and they now look like this: I really just want to show this to every developer (and maybe yell at them a bit) wasting their time making ultra realistic, super detailed assets, when they could just make everything to the same quality they did previously, have the game look quite a bit better anyway, and maybe spend some of that time making the actual game part of the game better, or at least different.

Imagine if Futurama were occasionally directed by David Lynch or Martin Scorsese, and if that's your thing then I'd give it a go.

Google cars now able to detect pedestrians human targets with ease an accuracy.

So where do I sign up? Subbes, someone with better motivation for organizational skills than me, a volunteer, anyone?

This is god damned amazing:

Just install the compilation mod I linked: http://www.moddb.com/mods/morrowind-overhaul-sounds-graphics

I think you're like me, wherein gummy stuff is eh unless its sour, in which case it's pretty damned cool. Sourpunch and etc. is pretty awesome. It's stuff that's usually coated in large sugar grains, which is somehow associated with sour gummy candy and I don't know why. Sour starbursts are the same, can't really stand Starbursts unless they're sour. Not that I buy candy... almost ever. I love sugar but get my fix from mochas and cookies.

Grand Coffee... I'll have to try that. I like Ritual, and know people that work there in SF now (they moved from Napa, promotions). And Blue Bottle, but Blue Bottle is pretentious as fuck. Oh look it's a non descript building downtown on a sidestreet with absolutely no sign or indication of what the place is and a line out the door and when you go in the overcharge you like hell for tiny bags of coffee beans. Still, their espresso is nice and super smooth, and the food there is actually good.

"Get you next time" aka in a real game "Fuck you jew cunt! I fucked your mother." So that'll be nice. Regardless, it looks a lot more directed and just easy than GTA Online. You just go and play, instead of all the wanton setup and blah blah blah you have to go through you just press a button and go. I've a feeling a less set up game may not be as fun though. I can imagine good players being able to just do the 'hack" thing and get away without you ever finding them. Or on the other hand if it's too easy then it'll just be the same chase over and over, probably with the chasing player losing as they're at the disadvantage. I'll wait for reviews, but I'm not just throwing in the towel on it. They seemed to have shoved enough stuff at it that something could turn out well.

This is And a huge new update... and it's better. You can do more stuff. That's all I got so far. Kind just enjoying it while listening to the podcast. It's just relaxing. I may actually now think this is worth the $10 or whatever I spent for it.

I just watched the digital remaster of Sorcerer. And man, that's still a damned good movie. And (for the most part) damned better for having been cleaned up. Occasionally they go a tad overboard, but nothing like that super creepy Predator one. For those that don't know, it's a kind of depressing, and totally real world setting, "adventure" film by William Friedkin, Aka The French Connection and The Exorcist. So no, I've no clue why it was named Sorcerer. It's a really sparse film, there's little explanation, dialogue, or exposition. But you get everything you need to know about the characters and story, and it lets the absolutely crazy stunts and action speak for themselves. It's also really beautifully filmed, the bridge scene... oh man. Highly recommended, you may not have heard of it because it came out in between blockbuster Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, as well as friggen Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars. Kind of hard to compete with that no matter how good your movie is.

I'd say the... look of the guys is right. But yeah it was kind of weird to see a show that gets some things so right (the look of that building the fictional company the main character works for is spot on) and then... make these sorts of people I've met and liked into some kind of super socially awkward stereotype was weird. I think the show could've worked if it had been a bit smarter about it all. For all it's problems The Social Network at least got something like the all night alcohol laced coding sessions closer than this show did, which was just "hey look this guy's totally obsessed with coding and has no social skills, looool!".

Behold the genius of @PeterMolydeux

I don't believe you of course. But that would be the best.

The opening isn't a huge deal either to me. It's silly enough and whatever. The problem with Pike's death is that he's barely in the movie at all. I know what its there for, but it's a really badly done Obi Wan. Obi Wan was with you for a long time in A New Hope, he was a badass and likeable and a main character. So when he dies it really means something to the audience, it means that we feel bad for Luke and that Vader is established as a credible threat and a guy we don't like. Here Pike's barely onscreen before he's dead, and that's the problem. The only reason he's there, the only thing he does, is die. I also know why Scotty isn't on the Enterprise, but that's my point. He's not on it because Deus Ex Machina, he needs to be somewhere else for the plot. They literally couldn't come up with an actual reason for him to go off, which I would've been fine with if they had, they just kinda wave him away. I also get that the Admiral is supposed to be an archetype, but he never DOES anything. He shows up to gloat for a few minutes, blows up half the enterprise (again, how many times do they rebuild the damned ship?) and then promptly dies. The audience needs a more emotional connection to all of this. They need to see him go out and do evil things in general to root against him. I'll give an example, classic one. Hans Gruber in Die Hard. He gets to be in charge of murderers and casually waves away the deaths he causes, so we don't like him. The he shoots Mr. Takagi in the head, and just for money! So he's a direct murderer, and a thief, and the audience knows not to like this guy. Then he proves how smart he is "I read about them in Times magazine." And outwits the FBI. This shows that he's damned smart too, so when McClane encounters him on the roof we see him as a smart murderer, a guy we are both rooting against and who we can believe is a credible threat to McClane's joe average cop trying to be a hero. In the end he also captures McClane's wife, a personal connection to our main hero, just re-enforcing that he's a prick and making sure that the stakes are high, as McClane has had to run away from this guy (and get glass in his foot for it) before. By the end we want him to die, but are allowed to suspend our disbelief and wonder if he might get away with it. That is a classic bad guy. In Into Darkness the Admiral does none of these things. Until he immediately starts shooting up the Enterprise he does nothing directly evil that the audience is presented with. We know tangentially that he disabled the Enterprise, but by then he's pretty much shooting it anyway. He also doesn't present a credible threat. He's got a bigger ship, but if you watched the first Star Trek you know Kirk can take bigger ships anyway. So we don't have reason to suspend our disbelief and think he's going to win, and we don't really have a huge reason to want him dead. So he's not really an interesting character. The problem with Khan is exactly as you described. If we were supposed to think about him in a deeper manner then emotionally connecting him to his crew, actually showing him interacting and caring with them directly at some point, would've been smart. Drawing a parallel to Kirk and his own crew. Similarly if we want to see him as a villain you don't just "say" that he's a crazy eugenics mass murderer. No, you've got to show him being a crazy eugenics mass murderer, you've got to show him lording over death camps or... or something. Otherwise it's a plot point that just doesn't mean anything or go anywhere. It's likes saying in the middle of a movie "Oh by the way, that guys Hitler." And then having nothing come of it.

It was just another obvious McGuffin that didn't really feel needed, I wasn't really that bothered by it so much as felt it was unnecessary. I do look forward to whatever else you have to say about it when you have the time.

Huh... Bad Robot seemed to like it. And you just say I "misinterpreted it" without explaining. But there's nothing to misinterpret, the bad guys weren't bad enough and there's simply too much telling and not showing, unless somehow the relatively disappointing box office results are incorrect? Black is also a throwback to the eighties, and studios like "moving on" in terms of audience. It was an unusual choice for Hollywood believe it or not. Hollywood almost exclusively chooses recently financially successful directors, regardless of how their movies were actually taken by audiences, and generally disdain people that haven't been around for a while. I didn't say it was a BAD choice. It obviously wasn't. Or even a particularly bold choice, but it's just not how Hollywood works usually. To Hollywood Black was a relative risk because he hadn't had a blockbuster in around 20 years. EG Schwarzenneger and Costner have come out of semi retirement, but they aren't headlining anything huge because Hollywood is tentative about whether they still appeal at all. Meanwhile Johnathon Leibsman gets a hundred+ million to make Teenage Mutant Turtles because Wrath of the Titans kinda made some money. Nevermind that it has a 5.8 on IMDB and only made money because it was a sequel with trailers that showed a large budget and Liam Neeson + Ralph Fiennes. EG Hollywood likes recent money (cough, why M. Night Shamylan kept getting gigs and funding) and doesn't usually recognize anything else, including success in the past. James Cameron had to fight to get Avatar finished with the budget he wanted, heck at one point the funding was pulled entirely. And he's James fucking Cameron.

I think it comes from the Victorian era or similar. A time when, if you were rich, there was literally nothing to do with your life but make up inane rules that would allow you to pretend that you were better than poor people. It's the only reason I can imagine for stuff like this or having several different spoons for specific dishes and etc.

Loved paranatural to begin with, but lately he's gotten off the funny and now I just find it kinda boring. It was much more my thing when it was poking fun at anime tropes rather than just being anime tropes. Speaking of webcomics: Channelate is hilarious now. Going back too... even a couple years ago it was kinda eh. But the guy seems to have found his footing now.

That may be the gayest thing I've ever seen.