dartmonkey

As far as I understand, it's been a big hit everywhere. The only thing that's rubbing me the wrong way is...squid don't work in water?!

Just finished Her Story. The process of piecing each thread together was fun and I liked the little insinuations and ideas about her character that you got from even the smallest clips. I also like that it was short. Your move, backlog. Edit. Shit. Ignore me.

I thought this would be a thread where we're all blowing smoke up Mr Remo's ass for his aural ouevre. Man, I know I'm probably a dick but I usually factor commuting time into my 'day plan' as DS and podcast time. There's nothing worse* than seeing a vague acquaintance on the bus when I've just settled into a 'cast. I have been known to feign not seeing them by being engrossed in Tetris. I am a selfish lonesome meanie. This thread also made me consider an uncomfortable (though thankfully remote) possibility - what if Firewatch is, you know,...stinky? :/ *exaggeration

I definitely haven't put nearly a fiver into it. No sir-ee.

Got this a couple of days ago and it's brilliant! Damn I've missed nailbiting last-moment multiplayer games! The best bit is that I'm going to spend the next half hour reading the Splatoon Iwata Asks

In a funk of half-asleep ebay biddery, I've gone and won Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. Anybody played it? Also, I saw an actual Retron5 in an FNAC in Lisbon recently. Does anybody know if there are any machines in the pipeline that will play N64 carts? I feel like a machine that could play the whole cartridge catalogue from NES to N64 would be pretty irresistible.

I just completed me some Thirty Flights of Loving and Earthbound. Both good video games. Top tunes. A nice double bill.

Done! You know, just in case. Although I've heard even 'free' might be a tad pricey. The Humble Weekly Bundle has got Her Story in it, plus other FMV stuff.

What's in Games, Twig?

Just skimmed these posts but cool to see some enthusiasm for this. It's joint top on my to-get list. I've still got a couple of hours left of GB's mammoth goty 'casts, but so far there seems to be absolutely zero Xenoblade talk, like they've forgotten it. They've discussed EVERYTHING in the final debate, so it's weird that this slipped through the net. Next week I'm planning on getting Xenoblade or Splatoon. I'm leaning towards Splatoon because I feel like the multiplayer focus is more time-sensitive than this. If I didn't get to this until next year, would the play experience differ at all? Are they changing it on the fly a la Dark Souls 2 or does the multiplayer rely on having a super active player base?

That's great! Lego thread! I really want the ridiculously expensive Ghostbusters firehouse and Poe Dameron's sexy black X-Wing.

I shall be playing most of the 2015 games in the 2017/18 season. Mario Maker was good though. A Happy New Year to you most excellent people X

They've got their minor issues, especially if you're burned out on Zelda or 'the formula', but they're both very solid, enjoyable games. Much of it comes down to if the idea of blowing into your DS to play panpipes makes you grin or grimace. I was the former.

Poe donates his spine to the injured Finn and they are symbiotically fused together forever - the perfect pilot-gunner duo. Damn, Poe is such a boss! I seriously came out of the film wanting an X-wing for the first time ever. His black Lego ship is so cool.

I thought they were setting up romantic potential between Rey and Finn, because their being siblings would be very much a stretch, no? Does Rey have a surname?

I was thinking the other day about how I found most of the EU stories a bit hokey and fan-fictiony, but for no justifiable reason. For example, Palpatine cloning himself. Maybe because it means there can never be a satisfying conclusion if he's got backups all over the place. I always think clones and copies and meta-mecha-versions of things are such lazy writing. However, I had no problem with the clones and the clone wars, etc. in the films. It's established in-universe that these capabilities exist, but if Snoke turned out to be a dodgy Palpatine clone, I'd hate it. Weird.

Boom - just completed Super Metroid. 66% items. It was good. Fun. I had a couple of control issues (switching between weapons was fiddly and my space jump only worked intermittently). But I liked it. (I think I preferred Zero Mission by a smidge.)

Wookiees have been known to rip people's arms out of their sockets when they lose (their bowcasters).

Pedant Question about Starkiller wotsit - could it move? It used half the power of the sun and fired at the Hosnian system. Fine. Then soaked up the rest to fire at the resistance but they blew it up and it formed a new star. Fine. But if they had fired after 'killing' the star, would they not be screwed and have to relocate? Seems like a massive expense for a 2-shot weapon.

Seeing it again last night, it was easy to identify and label all of the influences. Not just the spoken references but also the architectural/design choices. For example, Starkiller base obviously takes the glossy blacks of the Death Star interior and echoes the escape in A New Hope. But the architecture where Han confronts Kylo strongly recalls the Cloud City core from Empire Strikes Back. As Twig mentioned, you've got the (superfluous) trench run copy, the binary sunset-alike, etc, etc. It felt yesterday very much like a greatest hits mashup, but with enough competence, wit and brand-new elements to be successful on its own. I really appreciate the juggling act Abrams has pulled off, much in the same way his first Star Trek successfully (and satisfyingly) covered A LOT of ground to get back to square one, though there are some fundamental problems with his depiction of Trek - a universe that uses its characters to explore ideas rather than relationships. He's much better suited to Wars. Here he's managed to dispel the stodge of the prequels and reinstate the spirit of the originals. He's given Han a great last hurrah and a worthy send-off that will resonate in the sequels. And he's introduced a set of new and INTERESTING characters with their own questions and issues. And it's ENTERTAINING! My favourite line has got to be Han's response when Finn plans to improvise and 'use the force' - "That's not how the force works!" Thanks for that. The Kasdan interview is great and I liked the discussion of how Han takes on the Obi-Wan role here and how his death echoes both Kenobi's and Vader's (sacrificing himself for his son).

It makes me wonder if the whole enterprise might go the way of the Marvel films if they're not mindful of it. They get the formula and just start churning. I hope they consider over-saturation. Only because that buzz I felt when sitting down to this thing was so great - I'd hate to lose that. Do they do a trilogy every 5 years, plus spinoffs? At that rate duds are inevitable. Does it matter if they burn out in 10 year's time and take a few years off? Also, it was cool reading about Ewan MacGregor coming in to do that line and combining it with Alec Guinness. I'd love to see a Ben Kenobi spinoff. Even in a decade's time. Speculation: IF these Hayden Christensen rumours have ANY substance and it turned out he was appearing as a ghost in the next film, how would people feel about that?

During my routine après-film wikicheck I found out that Episode VIII is coming May 2017 - less than 18 months away. They must want it for the 40th anniversary. Crazy, no?

Boom. It's great to come out of a Star Wars film with questions because you don't know where it's going to go! Good film. Darker than expected.

I've put Assassin's Creed Black Flag to bed. 88% with all the fragments and chests. I'm not going back to 100% all the missions. It's the first AC I've played, it was extremely impressive at the beginning but it suffers from a delay between your input and the result on screen. I would guess it's the game number-crunching all the animation blending. The core running-leaping-stabbing-running bit is great fun but all the other mechanics struggle by comparison. The diving bell sections were tedious in the extreme. I liked it, but one Ubisoft open-world every 5 years or so is enough.