Dirk Anger

To quote the top youtube commenter: SHUT UP AND TAKE MY CREDITS! I haven't played any of the previous games, except the very first one (which at the time was a nice enough Elite-Alike), but this just looks... magnificent.

A childhood, circa 1992. You are trapped in this body; not exactly foreign, yet not quite your own. You don't understand the world around you - but that feeling is mutual. Downstairs, there is a box - or rather, a series of boxes on top of each other. They are very beige. From the inside, though, clinks a cascade of Bloops and Beeps, harsh and metallic, but in a strange way also very comforting. You might not realize it yet, but those Bloops and Beeps will stay with you for a very, very long time - such a long time, in fact, that you might some day create a totally arbitrary, quite pretentious thread on an internet forum for the sole purpose of reminiscence. Because one Beep/Bloop at a time in one octave was all your imagination needed. So, then: Bloops, and also Beeps: ​ (Does that make your ears bleed? Well, I'm really sorry. As I am for this thread in general - but I had a severe case of The Flashbacks, and simply, desperately needed some kind of outlet. My Facebook wall can only take that much.)

I LOVE that "naked Polygon" look. Reminds me a lot of the early 90s space combat games by DID, Epic and Inferno.

"....manchmal auch The Cure oder New Order; aber größtenteils die Smiths."

Good Vibrations "New York had the haircuts. London had the trousers. We had the reason." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DruhJkZU4EI What a great fucking movie. There's no plot to speak of - but it doesn't matter. I challenge anyone - Punk, Square, Hippie, whatever - to go watch this and not leave with a huge fucking grin on their face. Seriously, "Good Vibrations" is some of the best fun I had at the movies this year. You should watch it.

Sorry to repeat myself, but:

Klezmer, Motherfuckers!

I've just watched "Europa Report", and I'm still pretty much floored (or rather: iced. Haha!). I'm a sucker for Hard Science Fiction, and boy, did this movie deliver. I don't think I've ever seen a more realistic depiction deep-space exploration since "A Space Odyssey". Although there's a main cast of 6 (six!) full people, comparisons to "Moon" will be inevitable - but they'll be justified. The direction, atmosphere and performances are great, conveying the utter desolation and danger of space, but at the same time, ever so slightly, an ambiguous sense of discovery and adventure. Nevertheless, this is essentially a horror movie, but let that not discourage you, silly people who don't like horror movies. There is exactly zero bullshit in this movie, and absolutely no cheap jump scares. My greatest problem with this movie is that I found the faux-documentary parts to be pretty much redundant, and at times anticlimactic. I would've very much prefered if the movie had actually ended on the last frame, without the Not-Tilda-Swinton CEO lady explaining why the last frame was so significant (not a spoiler, or so I hope). But those sections comprise about 5 out of 90 minutes, so it's a minor complaint. Anyway: "Europa Report" is, in my humble opinion, the best Science Fiction movie since "Moon". You should watch it.

Supposedly, it's coming out this year already. November 15th.

This is gonna be a very long, esoteric post, so here's the TL,DR: Rio Reiser Rocks! Check out the videos linked below! I've often heard the opinion the we Germans "don't have rhythm" - meant as a slight against our general musical ability (most often expressed by German comedians, incidentally). If I were someone who gave a shit about such broad national stereptypes, my retort would be: "Oh yeah? Well, what about Bach, motherfucker? Or Mozart, or Beethoven, or Haydn, or Schubert, or Schumann, or Schumann (yes, there were two of them) or Wagner, or Orff, or Stockhausen, or even Fucking Zimmer?" But, as the astute reader will most definitely have noticed, there's a catch: Where's the popular music? Hans Fucking Zimmer might qualify - after all he scores pretty much every other Hollywood movie these days, or so it seems. But Rock'n'Roll? Internationally, we've got Kraftwerk, the Scorpions (shudder!) and (God help me I actually like them) Rammstein - and a handful of metal bands for the nerds. Not very much. Not for a people that are world-renowned (or so I'm told) for their deep poetics and philosophical thinking. Shouldn't songwriting come naturally to us? Well... kinda. As much as to any other language group, that is. Native German speakers today number about 120 million - which is, culturally, enough for a fertile native market, but not nearly enough to affect the wider - English - mainstream at large (we're not quite as weird as Japan, thankyouverymuch). Where does that leave native German artists? Well, in a very sad state, that's where. A lot of the (domestically) most popular artists/bands are OK-ish. Die Ärzte, Seed, Xavier Naidoo, Die Fantastischen 4, Sportfreunde Stiller, Die Toten Hosen - they all mostly beat Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber (or whoever's popular these days), quality-wise. (Why yes, I'm old and have no clue whatsoever about popular music. How did you figure *that* out?) Most of them, though? Utter muzak dreck we call Schlager. The less said about that, the better. Nevertheless, there are exceptions. I've wrote way too much already, so let me cut this short: This is about the Godfather of what they call German Rock'n'Roll. The original band was called "Ton Steine Scherben". They started out in 1970, inspired by The Who and the Stones, at a time when *nobody* did Rock Music in that language. They were radically working-class and left-wing - so much so that one of their songs was suspected to be a semi-official RAF anthem. And they rocked. Their lead singer and main songwriter was Rio Reiser. He was later (1986) best known for a (pretty good and actually pretty deep) dinky little pop song called "König von Deutschland". He died on August 20th, 1996, of acute liver failure. He was a gay, deeply Lutheran, anarchist. Rio Reiser was, simply put, the greatest songwriter in the German Tongue. He couldn't sing for shit, but the lyrics he wrote, the melodies he composed and the songs he sang are among the most beautiful waves of sound ever to caress my eardrums. This is, I guess, where this post becomes an experiment. I'm providing no translations (those might come later) nor explanations. All I want from you, dear native speakers of languages that are not German - is an impression. How does this shit make you feel? Keine Macht für Niemand: Jenseits von Eden: Land in Sicht: Der Traum ist aus: Durch die Wüste: Übers Meer:

The first thing I do in every new version is a Apollo-style mission, and man, do I have screenshots to share! No good shots from the ground I'm afraid, but I hope this helps you to get an impression of the changed face of the Mun. As you can see, there are a lot of new, proceduraly generated craters, making landing (and roving, I imagine) a bit more difficult. Some other bodies got the same treatment, presumably those without an atmosphere.

Hmm. Funny, I actually thinks the game looks fantastic. Yes it is "ugly" at times - but only when it's supposed to, I would describe Dark Soul's overall style as "beautiful desolation". Blightown has a nasty reputation, but it's not that bad. Just keep your cool, take your time, and don't fall to your death Also, you might want to get some gear with poison resistance, like the Pyromancer set and the Spider Shield.

You still need those, but maybe not as many. The new SAS doesn't "overcorrect" anymore, so gone are the days of wildly flapping control surfaces/engines, and consequently wobbly starts. You'll definitely be able to launch vehicles now that would have torn themselves apart in earlier versions.

That revamped Space Center is really neat: Also, I love the new (A)SAS code. In previous versions, rockets of this size had more wobs than a boxset full of Dubstep during launch. In 20.1 however, the vehicle pictured above, which delivered a ~50t upper stage to LKO, was rock-fucking-solid. Not even the tinyest of wobsies while launching.

A discussion of "progression through failure" and not a single mention of Dark Souls? I'm dissapointed, thumbizens, I really am. Sure, there's no funky generational system or anything like that - when you die, you simply lose all your unspent souls (which double as XP and currency), and all the monsters respawn. When you rest at a campfire (to spend those souls), all the monsters respawn. It's a simple mechanic BUT ERMAHGERD SO FUCKING EFFECTIVE! In Dark Souls, dying isn't a "fail state", per se - it's a didactic process. You see, unlike what you've probably have heard from a million mouths, Dark Souls is not a Nintendo-Hard ragefest. It's not exactly easy, sure - but mechanically, there are way, way more diffucult games out there. No, what Dark Souls requires, above all, is patience and the power of observation. By dying, you slowly learn how to approach the enemies and the environment, and if you don't act like a complete baby, you will prevail. Couple that with a finite ammount of health replenishes, and you've got a Risk/Reward-System that is just absurdly satisfying. Although, to be fair, there are a few situations that are entirely unfair and frustrating. I mean, fuck you, Anor Londo Archers!

This! A Ski/Snowboard game was the second thing I though of when I first heard about the Occulus (the first thing was "Holy shit, this must be AWESOME for Flight Sims!") I loved 1080° and the SSXs to bits back in the day - but what those games utterly lack is the sheer sense of verticality you get when rding down a mountain in real life. For me, every Snowboarding game I ever played doesn't feel much different than a regular racing game, without the perception of scale and depth. I imagine this would be very, very different with the Occulus.

Part 2: The Adlib Years (part 1):

Heh, that game's the reason I started this thread. I was surfing the youtubes late at night and more or less randomly stumbled across this, and my mind practically melted. Admittedly, the less than sober state of said mind was also a factor.

The experience will only be complete if the new game also deletes itself after installing. Ah, ye olden times...

Indeed. After all, for the real PC Sound Experience? You didn't need no bloody speakers! Only... THE SPEAKER! OH THE GLORY!!!!

Keeping with this week's theme, there is only one adequate response to dat ending:

I feel like that for this entire thread, we've been ignoring one, vastly more important question: What is the Dishonored Citizen Kane of video games?

If someone doesn't make a "Molyneux and Vanaman on a boat" game at the next Molyjam, I'll be really disappointed.

Truth to be told, I kinda liked the Chronicles movie. But Pitch Black and Escape from Butcher Bay are clearly the superior entries in the franchise.