malkav11

Re: the scene with Laura and Coop in the woods and the scene of Pete fishing... As far as I could tell at no point during this season did they use archival footage that was not previously seen in the aired Twin Peaks seasons, Fire Walk With Me, or the cut scenes that form The Missing Pieces. Since obviously Laura never interacts with a 25 years older Cooper during those scenes in Fire Walk With Me/The Missing Pieces (or indeed, with Cooper at all outside of the Red Room), it can't be Sheryl Lee in that new sequence, and it doesn't really look like her either. Similarly, the scene with Pete fishing...you have the original pilot footage of him getting ready and leaving to go fish...and then it cuts to a slightly sharper scene where he's only ever seen from behind. So that's almost certainly new footage and it's just not Jack Nance - can't be that hard to get someone who looks close enough from behind. (Speaking of Jack Nance, I had no idea but apparently he was married to Catherine E. Coulson back in the 70s.)

I loved it but it doesn't get massively less disorienting and weird from there. (Though Anna stops blacking out so much, which does help.)

Minor correction: Gatiss is playing the Prince Regent, not the King. At the time, the King was still George III, but he was plagued by mental illness and unable to rule so his son (who later became King George IV) was acting in his stead.

I can't go with you on that last bit (X3 was godawful, SR merely bad) but otherwise your list is pretty spot on. That's the sort of stuff that made me dislike Superman Returns, not it being "boring" - a criticism I honestly can't remember ever hearing although I guess I wouldn't be surprised if it was out there. I mean, my strongest takeaway from the movie was Superman being stalkery and how horribly out of character it was. Though I guess maybe I'd take that over massive-collateral-damage Superman of Man of Steel and Batman vs Superman. I don't know. On a non-reply-y note, you're partly right about Bryan Singer, Danielle. He was the director on the most recent two X-Men movies (Days of Future Past and Apocalypse), he merely produced First Class. First Class was directed by Matthew Vaughn, who I think was a bit better (though I did like Future Past okay), and who I still most fondly remember from Stardust.

Danielle, the two podcasts prior to this one, you started your Weekend Project by mentioning you wanted to recommend a book you were reading, but you weren't done so you were going to do it next week. Well, this week came and you still didn't recommend it. What gives?

I don't think Rob was snarking about the Apple decision because of some purported tie to DRM, but rather Apple's attempt to sell "now you can't use traditional headphones" as a benefit to the consumer. Which it surely is not. I mean, I'm not going to be invested in that particular decision unless the big Android manufacturers (particularly Samsung) follow suit (though they are apparently itching to do just that), and even then not super invested because I play my music (and, more importantly, podcasts) on my 160 GB iPod Classic like God intended...but I have occasionally enjoyed using Spotify on my phone, and on one or two occasions where I've forgotten my iPod, being able to substitute my phone was handy. PS: Super mad at whoever at Apple ditched the Classic, though. The Touch may do things I don't need it to, like, y'know...anything other than playing audio... but it's more expensive, has inferior capacity, and having to wake the device to use touch controls is not at all helpful when you need to rapidly pause stuff at work because a coworker needs your attention.

I mostly listen at work. I can't focus on audio content if I'm not doing something with my hands, but if it requires very much active thought that steals my focus from the audio also. So it's work (where 95% of what I do is fairly repetitive and can be handled more or less on autopilot), or playing certain types of Video game - i.e. a clickfest ARPG like Marvel Heroes or Diablo III, one of the Truck Simulators, grinding in a JRPG or unvoiced MMO, etc. But games tend to be sneaky about stealing my focus so I can only listen to non-narrative podcasts with them - chatfests and interviews and such.

I really recommend They Look Like People, currently streaming on Netflix. Very tight, subtle little indie horror film that does a lot with a few very unsettling visuals and strong casting of a few key roles.

The three main tabletop RPG podcasts I listen to are: One Shot: A revolving crew of folks, many from the improv comedy scene but roping in various other sorts of nerd from time to time, do one shot sessions of a wide variety of RPGs. More indie than traditional, but the hosts are big fans of D&D so there's off and on delves into one or another stripe of D&D and at least a couple of Dungeon World runs. A fair bit of Dread, also, the horror RPG that uses Jenga as a resolution mechanic. For the most part it's a very light-hearted podcast (the Call of Cthulhu episode was a Scooby Doo meets the Mythos take, for example), but every now and then it gets serious, like when they tried the in-development Apocalypse Engine horror game Bluebeard's Bride, run by one of the creators of the game, or their Dracula Dossier episodes, run by Ken Hite. I love both the wide range of systems they explore and their senses of humor (for the most part, at least). It's not uncommonly side-splittingly hilarious. The Jank Cast: Mainly discussion and advice, which I only listen to sporadically since I have little opportunity to play RPGs myself, but periodically they do really good actual play sessions of various indie RPGs. They've been the most mature (in the positive sense) and serious roleplayers of the casts I've listened to. Fair warning, they do get a bit dark sometimes. RPPR Actual Play: They release full sessions at a time (occasionally two at once) and tend to be at least 2.5 hours long, sometimes much longer, so keeping up is a bit of an ask, but they do a pretty solid mix of one shots and moderately lengthy campaign games. I quite enjoy everyone in their current mix of players, though they've had a couple of questionable folks over the years, mostly early on. One of their regulars does have a verbal tic that can be very distracting in the early episodes but has moderated a great deal over the years. Lots of stuff to check out but my biggest recommendations would be any campaign or one shot run by Caleb Stokes (campaigns: Know Evil, the Spared and the Spoiled, their current Brutalists and God's Teeth runs; one shots include Lover in the Ice and Bryson Springs), and the Call of Cthulhu scenarios that Adam Scott Glancy ran for them at various cons, which are full of lots of insane but true historical details.

What frustrates me about the argument surrounding difficulty/accessibility options in games like Dark Souls is that so often the people who are against it seem to be motivated by this weird, paternalistic assumption that they are protecting people from their own folly in wanting an experience other than the precise one that that person values. But the reality is, people value very different things about the games they play, and the only ones who get to define the "intended" experience are the developers.

Yeah. 12 Monkeys the series is very much an exploration of the idea behind the movie as straight time travel thriller sort of thing. Some interestingly creepy bits (Manhunter alum Tom Noonan features in a significant role, for example), but it's not the very surreal, nightmarish take of the movie. (And it doesn't even attempt to ape Gilliam's signature style.) Though, FWIW, I think the movie does come to a fairly definitive conclusion re: Cole's sanity.

So it is. Huh. I strongly suspect that that means the PS3 version will be the dramatically inferior version, but being able to run it at all is something.

That would be rad, but no, the Guild Master bonuses were 1) 10% extra exp for anyone in a guild with a Guild Master (don't have to be in charge I don't think), and 2) 3 codes for 30 set 1 packs each, as I recall. The latter were of course theoretically to hand out to your guildies to give them a leg up getting going but I confess I ended up grabbing the packs myself, and I bet most people with that tier's rewards did likewise.

I was excited for Persona 5 back when I thought it was going to be on PS3, which is a system I own. I don't have a PS4 and have no plans to get one, even for Atlus. I mean, maybe they'll get around to doing a PC version? Weirder things have happened.

It's set in the (late, I think, given that it has a Thatcher speech) 1970s. Albeit a really weird version thereof. It's pretty fucked up. I think I'm glad I saw it, but I have no idea if I would recommend it.

For me it's all about the singleplayer, which is head and shoulders above, say, the rather lackluster Adventures in Hearthstone, and free to boot. I do draft regularly, but that's because I also Kickstarted it, at a level where I get a free draft each week. So it's a free stream of cards. I almost never actually win the matches. The thing is, they do all kinds of stuff with singleplayer cards that would be unbalanced in PvP, and even for the PvP cards, they're interacting with equipment (which alters their card text and values) in unique and potent ways...of course, your character only has six slots for equipment, and they're specific (gloves, boots, etc). So you're balancing slots, building your character and deck in equal measure, etc. It's really neat stuff. There's going to be a lot more to it as they add Adventure Zones 2 and 3, more levelling tiers, more classes, mercenaries, strongholds, guilds, raids and so on, but even in its current form it's a whole lot of fun.

Tidus was vastly better at blitzball than anyone else in FFX, actually. The reason being that he can unlock (via an early story event, which I believe you can miss or fail) a special technique called the Jecht Shot that is ridiculously overpowered and that he can casually abuse. Part of the strategy ends up being forcing yourself to use other players so they can level up too.

For the record, Hex is still super awesome and better than when this was posted because the first part of the PvE campaign mode came out, they've added PvP card set 4 (heck, I think even set 3 is new since this post) and a new tournament mode, improved the AI, added plenty of new shinies, etc. Oh, and it's on Steam now.

I feel like DROD has a massive edge in that it is not based around Sokoban mechanics. (I hate Sokoban so much.)

I think there's a pretty clear indicator that coop is part of the Dark Souls experience as designed: namely, that it exists. Moreover, there are mechanics that reward it.

So did they patch this training room thing into Street Fighter V recently or something? Every time the Giant Bombcast has talked SFV since its launch one of the things they've brought up was how it had nothing to get new players into the game or, later, totally inadequate non-interactive tutorial stuff. Also, the thing about games is that no matter how story-focused they are, what makes them a game and not a movie or a book or whatever is that you are interacting with them in some way. So while I am perfectly content to get immersed in something with little to nothing in the way of mechanics, if the interaction that -is- provided is getting in the way (and very slow move speed would certainly qualify for me), then that's a problem that needs to be brought up, just like one's enjoyment of a movie might be hindered by it being displayed at the wrong aspect ratio or with muffled sound or something, or a book by it being riddled with typos or in a ridiculously tiny font.

I highly encourage people to try the Souls games, because there isn't (or at least wasn't) anything quite like the first couple and Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Bloodborne are all masterworks in atmosphere, ambient storytelling, worldbuilding and so on, and there's potentially a lot to appreciate about their systems as well. (Dark Souls II, from what I've seen, never quite understands what made those earlier games work and is much blander as a result. Don't have III and haven't watched any yet.) But if they don't work for you, there's no shame in that. They're a very specific, confident design that is just plain not for everyone. Including me, as it turns out. I got through 1-1 and 1-2 and 2-1 in Demon's Souls and at least poked at the other zones I could access, but ultimately I didn't have the persistence, skills or willingness to invest the time it was demanding of me to delve any deeper. And Dark Souls, by dint of making you defeat that first boss before you can even do much to specialize, pretty much stopped me immediately. (The preliminary boss in Demon's Souls can actually be killed in the opening, btw, and you get an item for doing it. But that's not the expected new player experience.) But that's me. I'm not great at action gameplay of whatever stripe and I'm easily frustrated by repeating content, especially when it can still kill me even after I've managed to pass it previously. I can appreciate the hell out of these games from a distance (specifically, the distance of watching someone else play them, either in my abode or on Youtube), but there are so many other games on my plate that work better for my schedule and abilities that after Dark Souls I accepted I wasn't going to get into the franchise myself. I really do find progression elements important to my enjoyment of games, though. It's a pacing thing as much as anything else: if I'm doing the same things at the start of the game as I am at the end, I'm bored. If you expand my opposition without giving me new tools, I'm bored and frustrated. Secondarily, it's also an important incentive to doing side content and especially anything repetitive or dry otherwise, but of course the latter are things that are ideally avoided rather than merely given a progression hook. That's not to say that I like grind, because I really don't particularly. But I like unlocks and making build choices and such.

For my part, the biggest reason I didn't get a Wii U is the same reason I don't have a PS4 or Xbox One: I prefer playing on PC and at this point I have so many PC games competing for my time (my Steam library alone rapidly nears 2000 games) that I just can't get that worked up about missing a tiny handful of console exclusives that I might be interested in. Secondarily, for a long time I also thought the Wii U had continued to use the Wii's motion controls, which I absolutely hated and ruined that console for me. I guess that's not the case after all (though it's backwards compatible with Wii games that do), but then we hit the question of whether its exclusives actually interest me. And the thing is, I'm not a Mario fan. The only Mario games I care about at all are the RPGs (Paper Mario etc). I think there's one of those for Wii U now, but I have a whole series of DS Mario RPGs that I haven't touched yet, so I'm not in any hurry. I also have a backlog of Zeldas and no real interest in Smash or Splatoon, etc. So I'm not sure there's actually much I'd be interested in.

Man, that sure did jump around a lot and feature a lot of people arguing way past where their point was made. And the note from Vic is every bit as weird as Nick said.

The Journeyman Project folks made Myst III, and I suspect that's why it's the only Myst game I've gotten on with very much. (Though I also appreciate them casting Brad Dourif as the villain. Love that guy.)