dusk

Had a ball playing these tonight. Absolutely brilliant.

Man, I never post here and I'm so far behind the times... but I just had to post. Jon, this is brilliant. The details are hilarious. Absolutely love it.

I'm gonna level with you guys. All I know about firetowers I learnt from an old Betamax copy of this movie:

..You mean Kotick and Allard, right?

HELLO JAMES I'm astounded by your ability to consistently secure your username. Well done. Sorry I didn't say hello before. I mostly lurk here. >_>

To the artists and subbes: Just absolutely amazing. Imagine receiving something like this from a bunch of people you (mostly) haven't met. Just blows my mind. Well done guys. That Remo will be my desktop wallpaper without doubt. Umm.. is there ANY way the light in the background of the Breckon portrait can be swirled around to say "fuck" from a certain angle, or maybe if you fold the canvas like one of those old MAD magazine fold-ins.. ?

I didn't realise the recipe was on the blog page.. Once I found it, I tried again and they worked really well. Last time I used rock salt and that was a really bad idea. Don't drink and bake. Anyway, thanks Doug. Sorry I let you die because I wanted to get it on with the cute Asian chick. Pleaaase can somebody explain the "color your hair" reference? It cracks me up like nothing else, but I can't quite pinpoint it.

It's Mother Day in Australia tomorrow.. So, given that there won't be much love for dad around this house, I decided to bake some Brown Butter Cookies using some LA Times recipe I found.. I burnt the shit out of them. The kitchen smells and everyone is angry at me. Thanks Doug.

Destinyyyy! I agree.. I just hope the gameplay does it justice.

Nooo! Why can't they do this property justice? Why!? To be fair, I haven't played it yet.. but I wasn't holding out much hope. A couple of years ago now, a friend and I drank a lot of beer and discussed what we wanted out of an Aliens game.. What our perfect Aliens game would be. We both had fond memories of AVP over LAN and shared many multiplayer experiences through the years. We also played the pen and paper RPG a couple of times back in the 90s. If you'll indulge me.. What we came up with was this: Basically an MMO where you create your character down to the finest details. Bullshit amounts of customization. This character is created on your chosen server. Each server is, essentially, a massive spaceship carrying marines. This also serves as a sort of lobby. On the ship you can interact with other players, wait for friends to log in or find others to group up with. You can also gamble, eat cornbread or watch miniature laserdiscs. When you're ready to go on a mission, you all head into an instance entrance. You can choose from a number of different mission types, for example: story-based missions, survival mode or randomly generated encounters. After successfully completing a mission, you earn money and better gear or you can find loot and alien tech out there. However Your character posesses something similar to the old "wound" system from a number of different rpgs. You can sustain a small number of wounds over time, but they have a negative effect on your character, eg: limping, unable to carry heavier gear. A wound can be healed by finding a medbay (generally only one per mission). You can become "impregnated" or "cocooned", both of which start a timer. If you run out of wounds, become trapped or.. well, burst and your character is left behind, then.. game over, man. Time to make a new character. So, as a team, you can decide to turn tail and run, pick up your wounded and head back to the dropship.. or fortify a position and try to wait for a possible rescue. There are times when you'll be required to split up or escort a scientist etc etc. Yeah, it's probably flawed and naive, but I think it touches on why the movie felt so desperate and exciting. The thing is, you need to care about or be invested in your character. Also, team-based mechanics and hard decisions. Games are so much more immersive and.. scary when you have something to lose. "No I don't want to lose my guy with the awesome gun and purple combat boots! Noooo! (wild pulse rifle fire) So, this is what I see as the problem with AVP and A:CM. You just respawn.

So very impressive... The only problem I have is that it, uh, probably should have been Gaynor rather than Vanamananaman.

Wow, well done affe. Uh, I mean atte. A dream come true. Yeah, he's all like, "Check out the rack on the blonde in row C!" So, of course, I've had SimCity in my head for the last few days.. but the only version I currently have is on SNES which is a very poor substitute for what I am now expecting. Sigh.

Utterly amazing. Surely someone has the time to make a Double Dribble montage of the thumbs crew in various poses..?

I bought this on the Wii U so I could play it with my son and I've been having a great time watching him nut out some of the puzzles, particularly in the Hillbilly level. We've spent time working through things logically, laughing at the names of certain objects and helping each other to remember which way to go when we've had to back-track. I really like that this game has allowed for us to have an easygoing multiplayer experience that's also made us laugh, communicate and solve problems together. Valuable experiences we don't necessarily get with more frenetic or competitive games.. and I'm grateful for that. Aside from that, I thought each area, so far, has had really nice tonal differences and was paced quite well. Are people really complaining about the animation? I like it. It's humorous enough and conveys an individual sense of movement for each character. (Special mention goes to the Hillbilly's footsteps on the stone floors). Yeah, some of the climbing and jumping to levels directly above the character was a little annoying.. but in a pleasurably nostalgic way for me. It comes with the terrain. I guess what it boils down to is: I've really missed this type of game. I miss actually using my brain to figure out puzzles and the feeling of sharing a joke with the creators. Yes, there have been puzzle-platformers in recent times, but nothing has felt this rich and poilshed, in my opinion. The fact I can now share a fun experience like this with my own son is the kicker. I'm getting flashbacks of Maniac Mansion and other games I can't even remember the names of this late at night, and seeing him smile and appreciate the humour and those "lightbulb moments" makes me very happy.

Oh man, I'm finally registered. From what I can gather, two of my email addresses were considered unacceptable but I was only given an "Oops something went wrong!" error. But, whatever. It's nice to finally be in the same room with you guys rather than standing silently, watching, with my fingers pressed against the other side of the glass. I listened to the podcast a long time ago, but then it went kaput.. however, I had no idea it came back! So, unfortunately, I missed the kickstarter and caught up fairly recently. Video games-wise, I am foremost a PC gamer, but I collect consoles that aren't playstations (My first was an Arcadia 2001) and have been playing games since C64/XT days. Nice to meet you.