Erkki

Hm... I think Tom Chick may have a point, but I don't entirely agree. Just finished and as soon as the credits rolled, I did in fact think "this would have been good as a movie", but then it transformed into "hey, this was a pretty good format for a video game similar to a 2 hour movie, just a bit longer because it's a game.". I think this is actually a perfect format for story-based video games. It was long enough to tell this interesting story (maybe could have been somewhat shorter, but that's very subjective) and have some video-gamey things going on. For me exploration is motivation enough to have a game instead of a movie, but I can understand that for some people it might not be. Firewatch is really gorgeous for exploration, though. I guess the dialogue choices did feel a bit like they wouldn't really affect anything, but it was fine. I think the weakest point of the game is actually controls. I was using the Steam controller and also published "Villane's Binds" which slightly modify the defaults, but overall it felt like there were way way way too many buttons in use for the relatively simple game that it is.

I kind of have a crush on someone who communicates even less than I do, which is saying something. I'm sure it would never work.

I saw 35 movies in January. The first third of February has been very slow in comparison, only 4 movies so far, mayhaps due to playing The Witness and Firewatch too much. I've also been watching Archer on Netflix whenever I need a background activity for 15-20 minutes (e.g. breakfast). It's funny most of the time, and brilliant on a few occasions, but I think it sometimes tries a bit hard to be offensive. A couple of days ago I saw Son of Saul. Oh man, this movie is brilliant, and harrowing. I hope it wins the foreign language Oscar. Early in the movie I was already thinking about wanting to throw up, luckily I didn't as I was in a cinema. There are probably many good movies about the holocaust (I've seen only a few), but this one really left me more horrified than I was before at the atrocities that happened in our recent past.

Had the same issue with Steam controller actually.

Seems so, it says "not currently showin" for me

What a disappointing ending! I'll go back to try doing some of the things I missed so far, but there's one puzzle that I'm just not getting anywhere with - the one where you go down some stairs hewn into sandstone and there's a door. I'm not sure I want it spoiled either, so maybe I'll just sit on it for a while.

Ok, I want to mention one more annoyance with the game: the sound. It's head-ache inducing. As I said, I'm not getting motion sickness or at least I'm not aware that I am, but I've been getting headaches. While I thought it was mostly because I have a bit of a cold, I think the game is also contributing by in a subtle way playing exactly the kind background noise that I would do everything to avoid in real life. Especially annoying is being near a laser after it has been activated. Really, while I admire the overall structure of the game, I think some decisions made are rather dubious considering how much polishing time they had. Or maybe there wasn't a lot of polishing time, it is a rather complex game.

385+50, I thought I'd try to find everything before doing the mountain puzzle, but gave up mostly because that windmill is so infuriating, seems the last one just doesn't work. And I realized that if I just start hunting for every last + "puzzle" I'll just get sick of the game, so I entered the "final area" as well. One thing I'm having trouble with is the puzzles with hollow squares. One more annoyance I have with the game is that besides the boat, everything that moves moves at a really glacial pace. There's even a few + puzzles where this is used, but fuck that. PS. I'm really glad I haven't looked for any spoilers so far. There have been some really cool moments when I've finally figured out a puzzle that has had me stumped for a while, but on the other hand, sometimes it's boringly primitive like getting a glimpse of something new when walking through a point and going, "oh, you can also look at that thing from this angle that I just didn't notice before and now the puzzle is solved".

Really good game! I'm almost at 300+30 with 14 hours played. I haven't had any motion sickness, but maybe sitting 3.5 meters away from a big screen helps? I had some headaches while playing it, but not sure it's the game's fault. Reading this thread really carefully to avoid spoilers. I think once people are starting to finish it, we should perhaps have a new thread full of spoilers for those who have, if there's still a lot to discuss? I was starting to get blocked by the stars in many places so I finally went and started the tutorial for those. Some really complex ones there. So far I've found two types of repeating puzzles somewhat annoying: the tetris ones -- it just isn't that fun doing tetris in your head. Even if it makes me feel good that I can, fuck that. I loathe music puzzles. I just don't have good enough musical hearing and some of these are even deliberately obfuscated, making it worse related to previous, any kind of puzzle that makes the screen blank when you fail, making you go back and solve the previous one that you already just solved. What the fuck is the purpose of that and why use it inconsistently for only some puzzles?

Almost forgot to mention Orson Welles' F for Fake (1973). It felt like it might be a masterpiece, but I lacked something to fully appreciate it as such. There is some really clever trickery in this semi-documentary. Part of the reason that I didn't fully understand might have been that the sound quality wasn't ideal, or I just am not used to the way Orson Welles speaks. But I think it actually requires more knowledge about cinema and art than I have so maybe I'll hold off rewatching it for a few years and see if I can appreciate it more later.

I feel less like posting here now that I'm logging watches in letterboxd, but in the past couple of weeks I've seen some (mostly old) movies I can recommend: The General (1926) - this almost seems like a Fury Road prototype, and I almost like it more. Buster Keaton on a train chase and back. Great physical comedy! 12 Angry Men (1957) - everyone probably knows this, and I may have seen it before as a child, but I didn't remember how good it actually was. Really gripping. Roar (1981) - this one is a bit nuts, because the crew actually lived with big cats in Africa and a lot of them got injured and some almost killed. Nobody will ever make another movie like this again. Worth seeing just for being so unique (AFAIK) and it has some good physical comedy and occasional cuteness overdose. Walkabout (1971) - A great Australian outback movie, one of my favourite kinds of movies. Embrace of the Serpent (2015) - Slightly ruined by a weak ending, but overall a good movie about a journey to find a very specific plant in the Amazon. Solaris (1972) - Holy shit, I can't even describe how good this is. I had always thought I had seen it around the time I watched Stalker, but maybe I didn't because I can't have forgotten this. It's just gorgeous and almost perfect in every way. Tarkovsky might end up being my favourite director after all, but I haven't watched all of his films yet. Jauja (2014) - Viggo Mortensen walking on rocks, what more do you want out of a movie? Mustang (2015) - Grandma and son try to keep 5 turkish girls virgins so they can be married off. Really liked it. Also saw Revenant, Hateful 8 and The Danish Girl. The first half of Hateful 8 was amazing, but then a boring drawn-out conclusion started, that just had to explain everything in painstaking detail. The Danish Girl also started out really strong, but ended up losing me at the last third or so. I almost cried a few times, though. Revenant was more consistently good, but I think ultimately it might be forgettable.

116 + 1 after 3 hours. Initially I was disappointed that it seem to have a lot of trouble with Steam Link. But I don't know if that was only in the starting area, or it was a network problem, or Steam figured out that it was failing and switched to some different encoding, but after a few minutes it went to normal and looked and played and sounded beautifully. The blue skies have some visible gradient lines which I suspect are not there when viewed on same PC, same as in GTA V. But I guess I can live with that, so I'll be using Steam Link for this going forward as well. I'm not sure how to talk spoilers for this game. Luckily prettyunsmart's spoiler was something I'd seen as well, but just as well it could have ruined a surprise. Maybe we should at least say the location the spoiler is for before the spoiler? Anyway, I've seen a couple of way more surprising things, but I don't want to spoil. And so far I have to say the Polygon review (which I didn't read except for the quotes posted here) seems bullshit and the reward for solving puzzles is just opening up new areas and making progress and that's fine as it has always been and sometimes that progress involves things other than puzzles and just area unlocks... I'll not say more. Then again I'm sure that closer to the end of the game there will be times when it is easier to get stuck... in the beginning there are so many possibilities that I can't see myself getting stuck any time soon.

This reminds me that I should (re)watch more Coen brothers' films, but I already have 222 films on my watchlist and it's growing every day. I'm basically set for this year if I want to also see new movies that will be coming out. I think I'll try to see more varied authors from varied periods and then maybe in a year or so I'll have a Coen brothers binge. Unless we do some group watching or something... I think my personal favourite is Big Lebowsky, but I did like O Brother a lot at the time. I don't think I have rewatched it in the last decade. So far I agree that they don't really make bad movies. Every one of them is good in some way. I did like Llewyn Davis, but thought it was a bit ordinary, not that I can personally relate.

Hopefully I'll play this tonight, and I hope the discussion can/has moved on from that one review.

Actually I just looked at some youtube videos and that satisfied my appetite for playing it.

Hmm, this is something I might do. I vaguely remember Unreal as being cool for level design and Skaarj and Nali behaviors. I think at the time it came out I didn't have a proper graphics card as I had decided to get a PowerVR instead of 3dfx Voodoo or something. I also remember there being factions of gamers who preferred quake or unreal. I also remember Bluff Eversmoking, but not beating the game. Would be a nice nostalgia trip to go back and play it now. Are there any fan-made graphical improvements?

Anyone else use letterboxd? I was looking for something that could be "goodreads for movies" and this seemed like the best bet. Besides being really unstable and buggy occasionally, it works great for keeping lists of movies. I now keep track of about 200 movies I want to see, and have recalled 700 movies and marked them already seen. At the start of the year I also started logging all movies when I see them, and also try to give a star rating to each, not meant as absolute so much, more like a tool to help me remember movies I've liked more than others. http://letterboxd.com/T4ffer/films/diary/

Does anyone else almost post in this thread about something personal and then stop when realizing that it might be a bit too googleable? Sometimes I wish this thread was in some members-only sub-forum.

Seconded

Yeah, Duke of Burgundy was great. Hard to Be a God is one of my favorites after Mad Max, and I also got the Blu-Ray but haven't dared rewatch yet because it probably requires me to be in a certain mindset to enjoy fully.

Well, I'm not in the US and I don't even know exactly what the powerball is, but I guess that's not the exact point of this thread so: 1) I would probably quit my job and start working on my own projects, maybe even games? 2) I would buy an apartment at a better location, with a sauna and balcony 3) I would give some money to my parents and sister, and grandmother, and tegan 4) I would get a 4K projector in the new apartment, and decorate a dedicated cinema room 5) I would get all the VR tech and maybe some other cool tech stuff 6) I would invest some money somewhere, make sure I can live comfortably for a while 7) I would donate some to charities 8) I'd get a car, maybe Tesla

Besides, programs written using words from languages with grammatical cases can read very weirdly. Even if the language keywords were translated and there wasn't any mix of say English/Estonian, the Estonian "sentences" would all be grammatically incorrect, unless the compiler had understanding of the grammar of the natural language as well as the programming language - making an already complex task exponentially harder. English just works surprisingly well with programming languages. And then there's interoperability of libraries - if each human language would have to have translations of libraries in each programming language, further complicating the ecosystem.

Nice, added a bunch of these to my watch list. Also Earth / The Infernal Method sounds good, hadn't heard about this before. I would also recommend the Dead Man soundtrack by that asshole, Neil Young.

Do what?

Who do?