Zeusthecat

I think you're looking for the math thread.

Retire immediately. Pay off all my debt. Make a few big-ish purchases like a new house and an island in international waters. Do some noble things. Invest the remaining money and decide on a somewhat frugal standard of living that I would adhere to for the rest of my life, giving me and those close to me the money we need to pursue our life dreams while still living like normal human beings that aren't completely out of touch with reality.

I haven't kept up with this thread well enough to see if there has been discussion on Making a Murderer but man that show has me so bummed out. I have so little faith in our justice system.

Chrono Trigger I just love that title so much.

I'm guessing this? And hopefully not this.

I keep mine super simple: Completed Not Completed (still empty, hurray for no Steam backlog!)

I saw the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie with my daughter last weekend. It was terrible and Jason Lee is a terrible actor. Don't watch this. But it had the guy who plays Buster in Arrested Development doing his best Buster. I love that guy and just seeing his stupid antics almost made it worth it.

I like to think in some parallel universe, Kenny Rogers made Star Wars movies and George Lucas was a country musician who started a restaurant chain.

I got some new jammies for my birthday last month. No flamethrowers unfortunately.

I saw someone link these older articles, some of which I read previously. Palmer always sent a pretty clear message regarding what price point they were targeting. Again, I don't think it's necessarily an unfair price, they just did a shitty job managing expectations. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2602906/final-oculus-rift-pricing-hardware-teased-as-gear-vr-reveals-oculus-ready-interface.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/technology/oculus-rift-headset-aims-for-affordable-virtual-reality.html?_r=0 http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Oculus-VR-Oculus-Rift-Subsidized-Free-Brandan-Iribe,23547.html

As a quick aside, I figured this write-up about Inside Out would be appropriate to post here: http://tay.kinja.com/inside-out-the-importance-of-sadness-1751057275 Inside Out may not work for everyone, but that article does a good job articulating why it resonated so well with me.

I guess the secret to good pictures is flamethrowers and bathrobes. I've got one of those...

I think the main problem is that they have always strongly hinted at a much lower price point. I think my disappointment comes mostly from them not setting expectations appropriately.

Kind of how I feel at this point. I just finished ordering the last of my PC parts for my upgrade and would have instantly pre-ordered this if it was < $400. But I just can't justify dropping another $600 yet. If it gets a bunch of glowing reviews and has a decent ecosystem, I might reconsider but I'm holding off for now.

Ouch. That is quite a bit more than what they originally alluded to.

I just don't even get what this MRA nonsense is supposed to even be about. From their actions, it seems that their mission is to make sure that everything in the world eventually just ends up as a white penis.

Wait, why are they boycotting Star Wars exactly? I'm sure the answer is as stupid as I am expecting but I would love to actually hear what offense this movie committed to men that earned it a "boycott".

After seeing the game re-released on PC, I was reminded of one of the things that terrified me most in video games: the environment in Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. The ever present fog was super oppressive and there was an ambiance to the atmosphere that just always gave me the chills.

I try to remind myself of that when criticizing this movie. For being the first full length CGI movie ever made, this movie set a very high bar and I can't imagine it being easy to hit every note perfectly with a new technology like that.

I think my opinion pretty much falls in line with Vainamoinen's regarding Toy Story 1. I still like it okay but this movie does very little for me now. I tend to like this movie less and less the more I see it and I've seen it quite a number of times at this point. I remember originally going to see this in theaters and being blown away by the visuals but man it looks rough by today's standards. Without that going for it, there isn't a whole lot else that makes this movie special aside from some good voice acting and a clever core premise. But given that that core premise has come to define almost all of Pixar's movies and seeing what they've built from this template, I think there is a certain amount of respect I will always hold for Toy Story. The good: the premise of toys that come to life whenever people aren't looking is still really cool. The way the different toys interact, the heirarchies they form, the way they pass time when they aren't being played with, and their undying devotion to their owner is interesting. The bad: their internal logic is all over the place. They set up the rules of the universe and the way toys work and then throw all of that out the window throughout the movie. Buzz Lightyear's character doesn't even make the slightest bit of sense. He doesn't know he's a toy but freezes into toy form whenever Andy is around. He sits there and has his lifeless body played with by a child and still has these delusions that he is an actual space man. He's a fucking idiot. One would assume that this is the way all Buzz Lightyears are (as evidenced by Toy Story 2) and that would be a huge issue if it weren't for the fact that they still follow toy rules when people are looking. Also, the toys should have never revealed themselves to Sid. They really shot themselves in the foot plotwise by doing that because it lessens the tension from some of the other scenes knowing that they could pull that ace out of their pocket if they wanted to. And the worst one for me was the whole magic flying shit at the end. Now I know they try to sugar coat it and insinuate that Buzz was really falling in style but no, he fucking flew. And it was stupid. If you want to have magic in your movie, fine. But don't spend the whole movie telling me that there is nothing magical beyond toys that are secretly alive and then at the end change your mind so you can have a flashy, schlocky way to get the toys back to their owner. At a fundamental level, I do think this is a good and important movie. But it has not aged well and as an adult, I find it one of the more difficult Pixar movies to enjoy these days.

Since I started it on the evening of December 31st, I guess I can add Metal Gear Solid 5 to my list right below my GOTY, Kerbal Space Program. It probably has the best open world gameplay I've ever experienced. And such a shockingly different game from 4. It's gonna be hard to play any other stealth game after this because everything about the sneaking around and infiltrating is tuned to perfection.

Yeah, I wasn't even that invested in the characters and that final scene still just utterly blew me away. That fight was an absolute masterpiece, which makes some of the missteps all the more frustrating. And Synth, I am strongly considering getting that HD collection. The stuff I liked in 4 was just so goddamn good and I really want some more of that. And another side note, I really liked how act 2 played out and thinking on it more, that might have been the best part of the game. Seeing those soldiers start to recognize that I was helping them throughout the mission and stop going after me entirely after awhile was just such a great touch. Especially knowing that it wasn't a scripted thing and was entirely the result of my actions.

I went ahead and played through this game again to snag a bunch of trophies (since my original playthrough was before trophies existed) and to re-familiarize myself with this series a bit before jumping into V. Overall, I liked this game but it had some really frustrating issues. I'm usually one to love cutscenes in games and it's one of my favorite things about FF games but this game was just barfing out half hour cutscenes every 5 minutes. I've not played any other Metal Gears either so it was all quite convoluted and confusing when the action part of the cutscene ended and they went on a 15 minute diatribe about some obscure thing involving 3 other characters I've never even heard of. Even if I was super invested in this series I'm pretty sure I would still be pretty overwhelmed by the constant talking and explaining and talking and explaining. And when someone died, they didn't just die. They spent half an hour giving some dumb speech and acting all dramatic while Snake just stood there quietly, listening to all their monologues and not saying a word (the Big Boss scene at the end was the absolute worst). They weren't all bad though. In fact, this game has some of the best cinematics I've seen (especially that Raiden cinematic at the end of act 2). It was just really uneven. One other main complaint I have is pretty much what syntheticgerbil ranted about on the previous page of this thread. I don't have much experience with Kojima games so I don't really view him with any of the reverence that a lot of other people have for him. I know he is a well respected developer and has created one of video games' most beloved franchises. But coming out of this game, it's hard to see him as some brilliant visionary when so much of the stuff in his game looks like it was designed by a horny 12 year old. There are some really interesting things going on in this game and I really love how fleshed out and developed the whole universe is but the constant injection of exposed breasts and crotch shots just feels really out of place. For me, less is more with this kind of stuff. I don't mind some sexiness where it makes sense but none of it makes any sense here. It's pretty gross that the five main bosses are really all super hot babes that act all horny and orgasmic when you defeat their beast forms. The only justification I can see for why that needed to be the case was so we could get a whole bunch of camel toe shots. I've never seen so much love and attention put into virtual camel toes before. On the gameplay side, this game was very Solid (teehee) for exactly the first half and was merely okay after that. Act 1 through the first half of act 3 are all quite excellent and I really enjoyed those segments. But then there were a bunch of turret sequences to close off act 3 and acts 4 and 5 had virtually no human enemies to interact with. Without human enemies, the possibility space in this game shrinks immensely. Sneaking isn't as enjoyable, there is no concept of a 'non-lethal' option, and the non-human enemies are just not that interesting. It became way too much of an action game in the last half and the only thing that saved it ironically, were the cutscenes and story elements. And that last fight on top of the tanker was pretty phenomenal. Even with these complaints I have to honestly say that I enjoyed this game a lot and am very intrigued by this series. As much as I didn't like the overabundance of cutscenes, the overt perviness, and the second half gameplay shift there is something really enticing about this universe. The production values and music are top notch and during some of the better cutscenes and gameplay moments, I found myself in awe at what I was experiencing. There really isn't anything else quite like it. Those first few scenes with the beasts were terrifying and the visuals and sound effects with those creatures were very powerful (but that was eventually undercut by the dumb "hot babe" angle). Pretty much every scene with Raiden was amazing and reminiscent of some of my favorite anime. And there were a good number of legitimate emotional moments. And also, the fart and poop jokes were pretty great. But it's me so of course I enjoyed that stuff. So yeah, I think I can appreciate where a lot of people are coming from with their respect for Kojima. It doesn't all work for me but most of it does and I can forgive some of the perviness if that's what I have to sit through to experience all the other great stuff. I hear V is the polar opposite as far as density of cutscenes goes so with that issue it sounds like it's more specific to 4, which I can forgive since 4 was supposed to provide tons of resolution to all of the various plot threads. And on a final note, I started Ground Zeroes the other day and was completely dumbstruck by how much graphics have improved between 4 and V. I think it is my first case of a current gen game that seems like a drastic graphical improvement over the previous generation game. 4 was gorgeous when it first came out but man that new Fox engine is just astounding.

Nice screenshot Nappi, I really need to get back on this and make a trip to Eve myself for all that delicious science. On the battery thing, I thought the engines had some kind of alternator and would charge your batteries if you activated them for a bit. I could be completely misremembering though. Also, if the ship had been Kerbaled, I wonder if you could manually extend your panels during an EVA. I've never tried it myself but it seems like something that the Engineer class could do at the very least.