Beasteh

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Posts posted by Beasteh

  1. Posted

    How are people building communities these days? Forums like this one seem quieter than they were about 10 years ago.

     

    Is it that poeple have moved over to new platforms? Like Discord - how does that work - how do people find the interest they're looking for? Or is it other social media platforms? How do communities (gaming and otherwise) get built in ths new landscape?

     

    Of the ones I know about:

    • Facebook's for people who already know you, not for finding new friends. There are groups, but IME they have a local focus.
    • Twitter seems geared up for companies, bands and celebrities to yell at their fans. Like, I understand if you're a game dev or a business trying to make announcements, a general-interest platform where anyone passing by could see you is great. But for the little guy, what's the point? Do users on Twitter connect?
    • Snapchat confuses me. Tumblr I don't get at all. Same goes for instagram - I take it the point is to follow good photographers and have nice pictures to look at each day, not to form groups? Does anyone even read the comments under the pictures?

     

    Sorry for the stream-of-conciousness, but it's been bugging me for a while. None of these platforms seem as good for social networking as what went before, or whatever it was our parents' generation did. People seem to be getting something out of each of these platforms, so they must be good for something else. It's that something else that escapes me. Maybe I'm just getting old and cranky.

     

    So help me out here. What platforms do you use, and what do you get out of it?

  2. Posted

    5 hours ago, BigJKO said:

     

      Reveal hidden contents

    I think the central theme is failure. Every storyline is centered around failure and how the characters struggle to learn something from their failures. 

     

    Poe fails over and over in his gung-ho planning (the film takes stupid shortcuts to get him to make that second plan, as has been pointed out) but fails again and again, actively harming the Resistance. Until he finally learns how to lead, not to some big, heroic victory but to safety.

     

    Rey fails to redeem Kylo or bring back the Jedi master to save the day, but learns that they don’t matter. The Skywalker lineage isn’t “The One!” 

    The Force, and hope with it, will come from “nobodys”, like her and a slave kid from Canto Bight.

     

    Finn And Rose’s story is undercooked, IMO, but they fail their mission, bringing the wrong codebreaker along, who betrays them and shows them that ultimately it might not even matter if they win today, it’s all business and money makers have no interest in peace. Finn takes the wrong, suicidal lesson from this, but Rose learns that it’s not worth fighting for revenge, but rather fighting to save your loved ones.

     

    Luke, burdened by the *big* failure of not believing in Kylo Ren when he needed it the most, shuts himself off from everything and stubbornly refuses to learn and let go.

     

    It was a film about deeply flawed characters making terrible decisions and losing almost everything because of it and that’s why I loved this movie.

     

    So basically, what Yoda said..

     

      Reveal hidden contents

     

     

    Thanks, this is a really interesting take on the movie.

  3. Posted

     

    1 hour ago, BigJKO said:

    It has its flaws, it was too stuffed with plot beats. But what a breath-taking and beautiful movie with a fantastic emotional, thematic core.

     

     

    I'm interested to know what you thought the theme of the film was. To me it felt like the theming was all over the place - the many plot threads didn't feel united.

     

    57 minutes ago, Roderick said:
      Hide contents

    Just think about what a missed opportunity it is to go to Monaco In Space and not do something cool with a high stakes poker game - Star Wars style. And why oh why does this trilogy insist on separating Finn and Poe, when they have more chemistry than any other pairing? Rose was an unnecessary, mediocre inclusion and her relationship with Finn not only unbelievable, but also... obviously... a giant waste of the gay romance that was set up between him and Poe. They had to put some serious blindfolds on to ignore the sexual tension going on there.

     

     

    Spoiler

    Finn and Rose weren't a good fit for a high-stakes poker game - you'd have to pull in Poe to do that, he's the only one with enough roguish charm. On the plus side, that would allow Finn and Poe to continue their totally-straight-you-guys relationship. Really, it would be better to ditch the casino plot and just have Finn and co smuggle themselves aboard the dreadnought on a piece of debris or something (kinda like a reverse of what the Falcon does in ESB).

     

    Rose was mostly irrelevant to the plot, save for that one line about saving what you love rather than destroying what you hate. Anybody could have said it though (Luke would have been a good fit for a line like that). It's also frustrating that these new characters don't add anything (Captain Phasma again...)

     

     

    I keep thinking about ways the film could have been better, rather than dwelling on the bits that were good. Sure sign that the film didn't hit the mark for me.

  4. Posted

    I also watched it. My hot take was that it wasn't very good.


     

    Spoiler

     

    The story felt incoherent, it jumps around too much for sure. The casino section could have been cut entirely, the whole "codebreaker" plot was pointless and just pulled a couple of characters out of the main plot. As a result of this, Finn and Poe don't get to continue their bromance in this episode, which is a shame as their chemistry helped to carry the first film.

     

    The chase was silly and held absolutely no tension whatsoever. As @unimural says, no feeling of a race against time (even a countdown clock would have done the job). No hard decisions, nothing to give us a reason to choose Poe over Holdo, no explanation as to why the rebels were split between those two camps. I'm not expecting BSG-level politics but something would have been better than nothing.

     

    The dialog was poor in places (one part that stuck out: "my faithful apprentice, you have restored my faith" - ugh, haven't they got a thesaurus at Disney?) and they all said "Rebel Scum" far too many times (it was funny that one time in ROTJ, but it's just goofy here).

     

    Also there were a few aspects about the fantasy physics that made me wonder - if you can use the hyperdrive to tear dreadnought-class ships in two, why bother with turbolasers and torpedoes? Strap a hyperdrive to an asteroid of sufficent mass and point it at your enemy... job done.

     

    The best part of the movie was probably the  a e s t h e t i c   - it's visually striking in many scenes, but the red room where Rey meets Snoke is incredible. Still feels like Star Wars, but it's a new look. The simple backdrop puts the focus on the actors. The guards, clad in red, pop in and out of the background, sometimes silhouetted, always a looming threat. So good.

     

    (oh and Phasma was wasted again, why bother having her if you're only going to give her a minute on screen?)

     

     

  5. Posted

    8 hours ago, Henke said:

    Man, it's the start of December. Way too early to start naming GOTYs.

     

    Totally - there's usually at least one game released in December that should be a candidate for GOTY (*cough*TalosPrinciple*cough*). Here's what came out last December.

     

    Myself, I only played one game released in 2017 due to a busy schedule. That game was West of Loathing, and it's worthy of a mention here. Mostly because it's hilarious, but the stick-figure art had a certain charm as well. Also if you're not playing with "stupid walking" set to "on" you're playing it wrong.

  6. Posted

    On 03/11/2017 at 12:11 PM, Ben X said:

    I suddenly imagined a story about an autistic savant who is able to solve the cryptographic puzzles without using a computer and the various people trying to make money off him/stop him. Basically the Rain Man Las Vegas sequence for a whole film.

     

    Sounds like a version of Pi for the modern age.

  8. Posted

    It's way more action-focussed than Thief. You have superpowers! I really loved how the weapons and abilities meshed together, it gives you a lot of options (some of which you'll see in the video above). Getting caught usually just means that it's time to break out the good stuff. Or of course you could teleport across the rooftops and make your getaway.

     

    Really mean to get round to playing it again sometime, my last playthrough was too cautious and stealthy...

  12. Posted

    Resurrecting this thread once more to mark the PC open beta, which started today.

     

    Played the introductory story mission - wow! Reminds me of Halo a bit, the part aboard the enemy ship especially had flashbacks to the Truth and Reconciliation. Gunplay feels pretty good, everything handles well with mouse and keyboard. Wish the UI would show key bindings for your abilities though (like Overwatch does) as I spent plenty of time in the menus trying to work it all out.

     

    My modest PC (AMD 7950...) gets a decent frame rate, so it's well optimised.

     

    Like others on here I'm also not liking the forced banter. Cayde isn't half as funny as the script thinks he is.

  17. Posted

    If Mario has access to a time machine, how does that change the Idle Thumbs Unofficial Mario Canon? Cappy could be riding a dinosaur thanks to the wonder of time travel (no need for Mario to be 65m years old!)

     

    On 08/07/2017 at 2:09 AM, Paul Smith said:

    Speaking of games similar to other games Friday the 13th seems a lot like Dead by Daylight, which I never played but my brother did:

     

    http://store.steampowered.com/app/381210/Dead_by_Daylight/

     

    I remember that game had a DLC with a famous slasher villain, like Michael Myers or something?

     

    Dead By Daylight was the game that sprang to mind when the Thumbs started talking about Friday the 13th. Proof that good ideas tend to keep coming back to the surface.

     

     

  18. Posted

    Talos is fantastic. The DLC, Road to Gehenna, is up to the same high standard and well worth playing. I'll quote what I said about it in this very thread:

     

    On 14/08/2016 at 1:56 PM, Beasteh said:

    The Talos Principle: Road to Gehenna 

     

    Story keeps the sombre-but-hopeful tone of the original, while poking fun at internet forum culture. The terminals make a return, but instead of philosophical discussions (it's light on the philosophy this time), there's forum posts, text adventures and even Jeff Goldblum fan-fiction (have Croteam been listening to Idle Thumbs?).

     

    As an expansion pack (sure, it says "DLC" but the game's plenty long enough to merit the description), it goes beyond the difficulty level of the base game, which was often too easy. You'll be using new techniques, pushing the core toolset to new heights - this time it's really a challenge. The final optional puzzles were a cycle of frustration and elation, punctauted with long periods of headscratching. When that "aha" moment comes, it's all worth it. Gehenna delivers such moments in spades.

     

    Talos was already one of my favourite games from recent years, Road to Gehenna makes it one of my favourites of all time.

  19. Posted

    According to that, I'm pretty much safe from robots (2.5%). Those at risk could become HR managers (0.55%), nurses (0.9%), elementary school teachers (0.44%), clergy (0.8%) or photographers (2.9%). Working with humans seems to be the best bet. Pretty much everyone else is totally screwed.

     

    Sadly there is no entry for "President of the United States of America"

  20. Posted

    2 hours ago, itsamoose said:

    Also a bit of a side note, the game only coming to the blizzard launcher seems like a much more consequential move to me than it's being made out to be.  It might be a one off thing, but at this point it seems like this is the first real sign that big publishers are starting to pull away from steam.  EA already jumped ship a few years ago, and I wouldn't be surprised if Activision were going to do the same in the years to come.

     

    Taking this derail further, I was quite surprised when the Quake Champions beta required that I download the Bethesda launcher. How long is it before each publisher has their own platform?

     

    Also suprised that Activision didn't rename Battle.net to something less Blizzard-centric when they had the opportunity. Management must have known that Destiny 2 was coming?

  22. Posted

    So what do we all think of the beta?

     

    About 2 hours in, it feels like a refresh of Quake 3. That's a good thing!

    I'm also struggling to keep up with how fast it is - That's also a good thing!

     

    The abilities don't seem to make much difference, but in a last-stand situation, they can get you out of trouble. Not that they get much use - people seem to prefer fragging the old-fashoined way.

     

  23. Posted

    It's not just you, I've had to wait before launching the game a couple times.

     

    How's everybody liking the PvE? Even on Normal difficulty it's been a challenge. I think you need co-ordination which you don't get with randos. All you get from them is abuse when the team fails (and my teams fail often). I'm not sure how to play Tracer well, and I can't take the pressure of being Mercy (you're single-handedly responsible for keeping everyone alive, plus people get SUPER angry if you're not psychic enough to know when they're going to charge in, so they die while you're off healing someone else).

     

    The "all heroes" version is pretty good though. Lucio tears it up!

  24. Posted

    I'm pretty sure The Last Patient was a ripoff of the Unity "Horror Hospital" resource pack - it was mentioned in the video I linked upthread. Also mentioned was Uncrowded, which is pretty much a straight lift from the UnitZ Unity resource pack. As Tycho said, the developer basically compiled the demo code and sold it.

     

    Digital Homicide, a developer who is notorious for making games cobbled together from asset packs, churns out dozens of games in a year. For an idea of what a game developed in a few weeks looks like, see this let's play of Galactic Hitman. All the art assets are purchased, there's little to no QA (how can there be if the game was made by two people in a few weeks?), and the game is just unfinished.

     

    The Jim Sterling video has footage from Chariot Wars (let's play), which is 23 Euros. Yes, €23.

     

    The problem with these is that they hide behind the "early access" defence. It's easy to say that they're using placeholder assets. Of course, there's no intention of ever finishing the game, and it's effectively the final product. It's bad enough that the game's a cynical cash-grab, but it's making things worse for all of us. The steam store is full of garbage, and there's no way to work out if you're buying a "fake" game or not.

     

    Sure, you can get refunds, but you'll never get the time you wasted back. Makes me nervous about taking the plunge on a title I've never heard of. Developers with honest intentions suffer becuase they don't get noticed in the sea of crap.

     

    Kotaku lays the blame firmly at the feet of Valve. This is definitely Valves issue to fix - it shouldn't be a viable proposition to churn out bad games. Reviews are no good (they're mostly fake, stupid, or both) and the curation is pathetic. The Explorers program doesn't seem like the answer to me.

  25. Posted

    Fake Games, according to Valve, are what the rest of us call "asset flips" with a side order of shovelware.

     

    Unfortunately, Jim Sterling is one of the few people who's been bothered enough about the issue to speak up.  He ended up facing a frivolous lawsuit from one of these asset flipping companies last year. I did find a less abrasive source talking about the issue, but the video in the OP also talks about the solutions Valve are proposing. The Verge has an article discussing Valve's plan.

     

    Valve's solution is typical Valve (and Silicon Valley for that matter) - get the users to sort it out. I'd be worried that the "Explorers" program would quickly become stuffed with shills for the asset flippers. Combined with free keys for favourable reviews, we'll just see these games make their way onto the store anyhow.

     

    I find myself wondering how Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo ensure basic minimum standards, then I remember Life of Black Tiger is on PS4. So there's really no escape.