Erkki

I'm curious if anyone else has seen Bellflower? Here's what I thought on Letterboxd: I have no idea how to rate this movie, therefore I will not. On a technical level, there are some weird free-lensing or tilting lens effects, which can be cool, but I'd have to give it another watch to see if they really make sense. I like to play with lens tilting in my photography as well, and I think with similar lenses as they used, but it has to be justified. There's also some weirdness going on with colors, but I don't understand that area well enough to comment. It doesn't look bad. However, in several scenes we can see sensor dust and possibly crap on the lens. Is this excusable? I don't know, maybe it is, if they really built custom cameras for this low-budget movie, maybe they couldn't keep the sensors clean, especially if free-lensing. From the story perspective, it seems full of machismo and misogyny, but I'm not sure what the director is saying about that. I actually get the feeling that he is pretty sympathetic with the horrible main characters or even identifies with Woodrow (whom he plays). For a fan of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, Woodrow and Aiden's obsession with the film was kind of interesting, but the fact that they look to Lord Humungus for inspiration is telling of their world-view. The whole plot seems like Woodrow's macho power fantasy, in a way similar to computer games like Far Cry 3. The motivations of the characters are pretty unclear, which makes it seem even more like a power fantasy where things happen just because the plot says so. The acting is not bad, and overall it seems like a competently shot movie, but there is some weird editing, which I wasn't sure if it was intentional at first, but the ending makes me think it was. There is some non-linearity and possibly alternative timelines, although I wasn't entirely sure. The non-linearity gets hinted at in the beginning, but starts to be introduced more and more towards the end. I'm not sure if this helps reading the movie or makes it more interesting. The genre is kind of like mumblecore with action and much darker themes. Anyway, overall, it's an interesting debut, and I want to see the next efforts from the director, but I doubt that he would have anything interesting to say about the human condition.

Call Me by Your Name was great, I think. Initially I wasn't even digging it that much, but it kind of got better and better by the end, and when the credits rolled it was already my favourite movie from last year. Will probably watch The Killing of a Sacred Deer tomorrow.

The End of the Fucking World on Netflix is above average. About 17 year old kids of whom one is extremely dark (plans to kill the other), and who don't fit in and decide to run away. It is different from anything I've seen lately, and well made, but probably not super memorable in the end.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll inquire... BTW I saw The Shape of Water at a surprise screening this week, and I think I might recommend it to people who have not seen

I thought I'd finally get a VPN so I could watch FilmStruck without moving to the US (I used Opera's free built-in VPN before, but that no longer allows selecting country). So I saw this VPN comparison on PCmag.com and though it would be safe to go for the winner, shelled out for 2 years because it was several times cheaper than per month, it turns out VPNs don't fucking work that simply... Firstly, I couldn't connect with Firefox, I could only start watching one of two movies I tried with Chrome, and then when I came back to actually start watching, FilmStruck told me there were too many connections, I'm assuming because other people are also using that VPN to use FilmStruck. I hope I'll get my money back... Yet another time to curse the international content restriction industrial complex.

Does Far Cry 2 have an XBow on XBox? When have we cried far enough?

Dead Island was pretty cool And GTA IV

Has anyone played Kona? It was in my Steam front page and they say it's similar to Firewatch and The Long Dark. However the story seems a bit dumb from the trailer...

From what I've tried I think indeed the VR game is better. And BTW, I wouldn't say that there is just some tiny bit of metahumor, there is a lot of this shit if you count it all, and also consider that the game is rather short so altogether it makes up a considerable portion of the game. And I don't think it's worth spoilering it. According to Steam, I beat it in 2 hours (maybe rounded down a bit?). During these 2 hours, the game (made me): * quit to the main menu to continue (twice) * quit the game to the desktop to continue * stand still and read nonsensical rambling until it progresses (numerous times) * mash random keys while the game writes a predetermined chat message on screen and press Enter to continue (numerous times) * shoot myself in the head to continue, but wait, NO NO NO shoot head, now it worked * told me that I should become a viral marketer for the game after I beat it All this in 2 hours and involved loading times, does not indicate that the developers respect their players and thus prompts my response that I don't respect this bullshit structure they've built around a good game idea. If they learn from this, though, and it seems they have with the VR version, they will keep this away from future games and win back my respect perhaps. Also I don't get the point of the various demo-like things in the main menu. I didn't try them all, but it seems like something they just put there that doesn't really improve the game in any way.

I think I'm starting to think the same way - RPGs are time thieves by design - designed to make you grind towards choosing a certain path. I think a better way is to do it without the grinding - like Metroidvania, or even The Witness where your progression is determined by knowledge you've accumulated. I loved The Witcher 3, though. But when I see that I've put 150+ hours into it (w/o finishing the expansions) I'm not sure the grinding was important for the experience. I loved spending time on exploring, but not for the purpose to find new areas with XP for progressing. I think a 3 times shorter The Witcher 3 which would have eliminated grinding would have been preferable. This RPG-weariness is one reason I decided to not get Prey, althouh I loved the demo. Maybe I'll change my mind later.

I didn't find it to be very hard. And it turns out when I wrote my previous post I was just a couple of kills from beating it. I might give a try to endless mode, but I did find the story to be frustrating and I agree that putting a call to viral marketing into the story is super gross. I do not have much respect for these developers, even though they had a cool idea and did an ok implementation of it.

Sorry I haven't read all others posted here, so it might echo someone. I just started playing yesterday and it's fun and innovative, but... Man I find this game frustrating. And not the main gameplay so much as the structure. This ASCII faux-nostalgia BBS/Norton Commander stuff just goes too far. What the hell were the designers thinking when they made quitting to the main menu part of gameplay. And not just that, at one point you have to QUIT THE GAME to continue. This is idiocy way beyond even any of the modern-world animus bullshit in Assassin's Creed (which I might even secretly liked a bit). This is not innovation, it's simple bullshit. And yes, the main gameplay also. First, it's fricking unclear when a bullet is just about to pass you, where your boundaries are. Is it going to hit you or not? Secondly, there should be some way to gain a glimpse around you without spending time. You can die without even knowing what happened - usually a guy just teleported behind you and killed you. This is not a fun part of the gameplay. Generally I think it would be much improved with a short, limited rewind capability. It's really annoying to repeat some sections especially when there is slight randomization involved. But on the whole it's still definitely worth playing, I think I will try to finish it.

Then again countdown videos like this make it seem like it was a pretty good year

World of Tomorrow Episode Two: The Burden of Other People's Thoughts ★★★★ Didn't quite touch me as much as the first one, which is understandable, since it's repeating similar themes, but it's still really good. Also this time it was a bit harder to follow the time traveling stuff, or at least it seemed so.

Seconded that. BTW looking over Patrick's list again, I think I should add The Crescent to my list as well. Even though I rated it as average due to the last half or third of the movie, I really think the first half was excellent and maybe the whole movie should still not be missed.

Haven’t posted in this thread for a while, but I have to say guys, I think Inis is a super awesome evolution of the Cyclades/Kemet kind of area control game. It has improved on the simplicity of the rules and dramatically shortened the game time compared to Cyclades. It can take you many games to realize how many differenent ways there are to victory, and then it can still surprise you. This last game I thought I had a chance to win on the first round, but instead lost on the second, this is how dramatically quick it can be, if players want to go really competitive. It has card drafting instead of Cyclades’ auctions and it works really well without much downtime compared to possible analysis/paralysis of Cyclades. And the way all the possible actions come from cards (drafted and otherwise gained) is brilliant combined with the area control mechanics.

I still have to see some that I expect to be good like Call Me By Your Name, Lady Bird, The Shape of Water, Dunkirk. But aside for a few great movies I can count on my fingers, I was rather disappointed by the films of 2017. Well, there's some prejudice also in play - I haven't even determined a lot of movies from 2017 to be worth seeing. I did see about 50 movies. Maybe I'm paying too much attention to ratings now (I often skip the movie if the Letterboxd rating is not approaching 4), but I think it's also that I still have tons of old movies to watch that are likely to be better than most from this year. The ones I would recommend are (sorry, I like to do it in this order so I'll know when to stop): ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Blade Runner 2049 ★ ★ ★ ★ The Florida Project Get Out Let the Corpses Tan mother! 78/52 (A documentary about the shower scene in Psycho) Resurrection (A Belgian movie of a relationship between an old man and the fugitive he hides) Have You Seen My Movie (composed of scenes of people going to cinema, taken from some famous movies) ★ ★ ★½ The Square Wild Boys (I wouldn't necessarily recommend any others from this year, but I'll include all ★ ★ ★½ to have a similar number as Patrick and TychoCelchuuu) Ava The Contestant Nathan for You: Finding Frances I Am Not a Witch Filthy Okja A Fantastic Woman Loveless Thelma The Meyerowitz Stories Baby Driver The Other Side of Hope (watch Le Havre instead) John Wick: Chapter 2 (better than the first one) ★ ★ ★ (EDIT - adding a couple of films that are noteworthy even if my average rating is not great) The Crescent (first half of the movie is amazing, but I personally didn't enjoy the second half) Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (I rated it low because it didn't feel like the bigotry was ironic, but there are different ways to look at it) [edit] In comparison, for 2016 I would have had about 30 movies rated 5 or 4 stars (but I've also now seen 100 from 2016 vs 50 from 2017)

I bought a bunch of games from the Steam winter sale for up to $20, spending I think around $150+. Examples I can remembmer: Opus Magnum, Rime, Human: Fall Flat, Edith Finch, Grow Up. Then on the last hour I decided to go with it and bought Assassin's Creed: Origin - I think the only AAA game for me this year, even at 30% off (I decided to limit myself to the demo of Prey). I just heard enough good things about it and the last drop was Jane Ng tweeting how she enjoyed the photo mode.

Just finished Edith Finch. Quite a touching story and I'm glad I played it and want to get some info about the background. Just looked at the achievement list and again I have to say achievements in games are mostly quite dumb.

Damn, spoiled :/ I was hoping to discover myself what things I find on the way. Just made it to the slide, but fell down all the way :/ [edit] oh well, now decided to watch the video since I've seen so many youtube screens already of things to come and now I again wished I hadn't

Got the game, it's pretty brilliant. It seems I'm somehow drawn into weird physics based games: Grow Up, Human Fall Flat, now this. I can't play it for very long, though. I've made it up to the second lantern once, but after that I fell down and now I can't seem to repeat what I did the first time there, after being explicitly told to do that

I guess I meant whether it’s more arcade’y and shooter’y as I consider BioShock or immersive sim like Deus Ex

After all the recommendations for Prey, I'm playing the demo, and it's really good in some ways. But in other ways, it starts resembling BioShock in a lot of ways and I got tired of that some time ago. Is it more like BioShock or more like Deus Ex Human Revolution? To be honest, if it's a very long game, I might still skip it since I haven't even found time for the next Deus Ex after Human Revolution.

Completed Gorogoa, a unique puzzle game that I got bundled with Edith Finch. It's really great IMHO, you might think of it as belonging to a similar type of puzzle games as The Room games, but it's rather unique in presenting layers of 2D images that can have windows into each other and you have to explore and find a way to connect them in a different way. It has nice minimalistic music, and I think it's one of the most refreshing puzzle games I've played in years. Quite short, though, just a couple of hours.

Happy New Year!