vimes

Hey, I watched The Apartment, which was fantastic! It manages to be smart, funny and grim without sounding artificial or conceited - the whole post-OD sequence is fantastic in that respect. The only gripe I have would be against the little of soundtrack there is, which tended to be full of pathos. My favorite part is how I also watched Prometheus which, beside the fantastic visuals and atmosphere of the Prometheus, turned out to be just full of ... nothing. It is probably the best directorial effort of Scott since 2005 and the cast is very solid, but it felt unecessary in a slightly infuriating way : the movies doesn't have a lot to say and when it does- - it's clearly material for the sequel.

I thought the biggest issue might the cost (the bottle + 16 filters cost 150 dollars), but since it last for 4000 * 14 litres (about 75 years if you drink 2 liter of water a day), it shouldn't be that much of a deterrent. On their website, you can even buy one for donation at a lower price, which is pretty cool.

After a few mention on this forum, I watched The Smell of Success and the two seasons of Louie. Maybe Louie is not meant to be caught up on all at once since I got a tired of the dicks and balls jokes from the stand-up segments pretty quickly. Because, beyond that, it's a pretty fantastic show, with consistently brilliant characterisation. Overall, it sorts of navigates the soap opera and sketch genres without being pointless or repetitive, which is a feat in itself. It's also more subtle, inventive and deep that what I expected from a comedian first TV writing job. This is somewhat more true for the 1st season than the 2nd, which felt more formulaic (hey more impromptu death and more hobos) , but I can't dismiss Pamela's character and the lovely quiproquo cliffhanger ending. Anyway, I wonder if season 1's doctor-in-the-church segment (featuring the but underused Tom Noonan) holds any truth to it. The Smell of Success is the great movie advertised by Chris and TheLastBaron; it has great performances and is full of a healthy cynicism that still manages to end on a happy note that doesn't look out of place. A few random thoughts: I'm really surprised by how much the smearing issue fits the post-McCarthysm area - I'm not sure a lot of movie would be bold enough to be that current. The whole sequence in the restaurant which leads the first scene between Lancaster, Curtis and the Senator is now probably among my favorite in terms of editing, framing and direction. And the dialogs that follows ​ " Mr. Falco, let it be said at once, is a man of 40 faces, not one - none too pretty, and all deceptive." Genius The only disturbing thing is - and don't read that if you don't want to risk not being able to unsee it - Any other movies of the same era to recommend ? If possible, without without emotionally abusive relationships, I've been getting a lot of those in books and movies recently.

I finished recently "The Death of Ivan Ilitch" and "The Devil" by Tolstoi which I only enjoyed reasonably but I think would interest a few people around here. Both of those centre on characters who, at one point in their lives, take a look back and are horrified at what their past have been. Ivan Illitch is better in my opinion, because of the way it coldly describes the inescapable fear of death. It's not a complete success though: As for "The Devil", it was equally fascinating and frustrating to me, It's fascinating, because Tolstoi depicts a character who is mostly harmless, who wants to good, but is overblowing so much his unique flaw, that he makes it harder for him to resist it. It's like he constructed this dark, twisted version of his desire and, having created the beast, has to put in motion the doom he's convinced it will bring. A sort of self-fullfilling prophecy. It's fascinating, because it's as if his far too demanding moral system pushed him toward violating it. But it's frustrating because the short-story is quite long and the back and forth between neurosis and stability phases are numerous and repetitive. It's an interesting read after all the AA stuff from Infinite Jest. It's also pretty cool, because it has two, very different endings.

Isn't it to the credit of the developers to have created a world, picked atmosphere and scoped their game so that everything was just right? You can't blame the game for being as short as it needed to be.

Thank you Sucker Punch and thank you IO Interactive.

As a way of conjuring experts and pushing boundaries, Depth Jam probably works very well. But it caters to a very, very specific audience: solo developers who are both highly experienced and highly skilled and who are facing very specific issues in games driven by a single, all powerful creative vision. I have about none of those characteristics and I'll be using indie game jam to testbed ideas that are incompatible with my employer's profile. But good for them, those guys put themselves in a position where they need this kind of gathering and it's cool that they are creating scaffolding for their future growth.

Ah, well. So this is self parody ? I still don't like it.

My last post mentionned Hyouka as a possibly interesting anime. It now jumped to the "season favorite" spot: yes, it's presented as a contemporary high-school mystery anime , but the first 5 episodes revolve around the main cast excavating the less romantic aspects of student activism in the 60's. How cool is that ? It doesn't hurt that Kyoto Animation is producing it: the direction is bold but quietly so and the art/animation is excellent.

The use of noun as titles, made up technical vocabulary and badass phrasing like that sound to me so self indulgent that it makes my flesh crawl. For similar reason, Metal Hurlant styled comics and a big part of Frazetta's work affect me similarly. Still, a friend lent me The Diamond Age, so I'm giving it a try.

I'm halfway throught the book (cut in four parts - 3 for the book, 1 for the notes), but what and I feel like I've chugged a whole library already. Getting warmed up to the style was hard: in the first reading sessions, my endurance was not match for the writer's. I couldn't keep up till the end of some sentences for the first few hours, then I dropped during some passage, and I felt like The Man when I finally reached the end of a chapters without burning out... After that, I really enjoyed the book: it's really easy to get drawned in by the thought process of the characters and by the richness of details that the fake historical bits are full of. It's also amazing how Wallace can build compelling arguments and discussion about things whose premices are bordeline ludicrous. The segments I'm more interested in are about the unfathomability of the 12 steps programs' success (Don Gately is a really a fascinating character to watch wrestle with his addiction and his recovery) and some of the earlier chapters written from the perspectives of addicts came out as frighteningly vivid - one in particular resonating with me in disturbing ways. And I'm also getting a kick out of any of the phone discussion between Hal and Orin. Still, Reading Infinite Jest has some damn uncomfortable side-effects: it's basically a blackhole, sucking in all my intellectual 'stock' for the two weeks I dedicated my 3 hours daily reading time to it. Not only is it sometimes demanding to read it, but it's also prone to send my mind in spiraling though experiments and the content of each reading session haunted me way afterward. I don't see how anyone can read this book, and this book only until completion. I couldn't: I had to get time away from Infinite Jest to others so reading would still hold some replenishing value, not only depleting ones. Anyway, a great book, but clearly too much too handle in the reading style I've had so far.

So, wasn't it supposed to be one book per month? Or is the book club only starting when the podcast gets made ?

I don't how this will be used, but the idea of having each character bring is own inner-world in The Cave is a very, very elegant. The in-game art looks amazing; way better than what the character concepts hinted at. all around!

So, with no internet at home, I've been playing Fez 90's style: no walkthrough; no hints. I like it. Not in a giddy, need-to-tell-everybody-about-it kind of way. But in a quiet, meditative, slightly obsessed way. Beside the expected quality of the puzzle and atmosphere, what surprised me was that the control system caters for both beginners and expert: you rarely fall into pits for no reason at the beginning and by the end, you can navigate the environment very quickly by using down+release; jump-wait-up to go through the vines quicker, etc... I've finished my first playthrough and now am at in NG+. I've pretty much hit a hard wall since solving the . I'm know . My main 3 gripes with the game are that solving the puzzles doesn't lead to a better understanding of how the world works and what is the History behind it (which Myst did well) there are no toys that you can experiment with to test theories about some part of the world/enigma. the game doesn't contain tools to support 'brainstorming'. The following you have been great if unlocked in NG+ . Maybe the last one is a bit too much, but frankly, games like that, that requires to understand and remember a bunch of stuff should support storing, sorting and comparing ideas; because pieces of paper only can bring you this far. I might give up soon but I haven't quite yet because I think getting all the cubes might provide a more grounded ending, that gives more clues to the universe and background. If I do give up thought, it would have been a nice ride As a side note, I had a string of weird conversations with a friend at work who's also playing Fez: we were trying to help each other out, without spoiling each other fun; and that infused an awkward intensity in the conversation, as if we were asking for gifts that could be poisonous.

This is a very strange interview. The LD way of approaching the topics presented by Rob sounded more like that of an expert gamer than of a designer : every time Rob went fishing for explanations on why systems were designed a certain way (e.g. the different in pace between the submarine warfare loop and the aircraft warfare loop) Haugland only gave further details about how those worked, instead of providing info about the intent behind those caracteristics or the history of iteration. Weird.

Jake, your post outlines pretty well what skills a game designer should have to be more than just an avid/expert player. It's also a really cool addendum to Chris and Sean's discussion on playtesting from a few weeks ago. From my experience though, the feedback loop you're describing - where only the devs and the gamers are involved - is probably only found in independent studios though, i.e. one that aren't part of a publisher or whose project is commissioned by one. For non-independent studio, gamers' feedback is rarely just filtered from the design perspective (what's best for the game) and marketing and other political force usually muddles the process; which makes it difficult to take external opinions a fair look. Anyway, I backed the DoubleFine project because I wanted them to create a game in a context pretty much void of any external pressure. Let them do their thing in a similar way Woody Allen and the Coen's shoot their movies. So, I wish they would just not gives a rat's ass about the fans/backers. At all. Also, I wonder what genre Gilbert's game will be in. Please, not a Duablo-like

I get behind that; probably one of the best anime series out there.

I wish this was read by William Shatner on a music by Portishead.

I spent another whole day reading; this time going through Forever War, which I really enjoyed. The first part was less impressive than the rest though : I'm interested in technonological projection but the ideas presented there have probably been recycled in a dozens other books and movies; so the novelty wasn't as striking as what it might have been. I took a lot more out of the second part of the book which deals the relation of veterans to the military, overblown by the effect of time dilatation. It gets to really interesting places - notably, intelligent explorations of the evolution language and sexuality - and the main character provides an increasingly interesting view of the world (which isn't a given) but I wish it dropped a few concepts that were smart, but not essentialy linked to the building of the structure of the book. For that, it's a bit inferior to The Man in the High Castle, in the sense that in the end, it's a bit overwhelmed by the possibilities of its main narrative tool (time dilatation) where K Dick's book demonstrate a lot of restraint with a similar device. Anyway with that book done, I can't push reading Infinite Jest anymore .. I'm thinking of hacking it apart like this suggests. I'll probably go for 3 pieces + notes.

I still stand by my earlier remarks, but, Ooooh, I'm now getting very excited about this game!

So, I just finished The Man in the High Castle. I expected the book to focus on Hitler, since I thought the titled refered to his "Kehlsteinhaus"; but I was wrong and that's probably for the better. I just wrote a wall of text about what I feel is the main thematic, but it doesn't feel like it should be here. I might post it on goodreads and link it here. So, as a summary it's brilliantly crafted it explores both 'thought experiment' kind of puzzles and very personal human ones Nobusuke Tagomi is one of the most complex character I've ever seen depicted I wish I had known more about the I Ching and pre-War Japan before starting reading. So maybe you'll want to do that. If anybody can tell me where the short, saccaded sentencing that some of the character employ during decision making comes from, I'll be super grateful. I suspect it's from Japanese poetry but I'm not sure

Doing gameplay programming for a living. Some titles I contributed to involved rolling with the Pope. But I can't take credit for that particular feature.

Happy birthday and awesome present you got here! I've bought around half of them individually and never regretted any of the purchase.

I've got similar pulsions toward a few movies but it always looked impossible to remove elements without a) needing some new material to transition between what remains or polishing endlessly the editing, to get everything right I.e. I'm a lazy bastard. Still, I would love to see someone else try and document the attempt.

Depending on what you enjoyed out of Bakemonogatari, it can be a valid criticism. The two series are significantly different after all : the 'mystery solving' aspect of the first series is traded for a 'branch out on weird topics' in the second; so, if that's the only reason you liked Bakemonogatari, Nisemonogatari won't satisfy you. To be fair, I understand why people would dislike the series : it's fairly pretentious, it goes along at an odd pace, doesn't really have an overall point, it contains a lot of long-winded rhetorical dialogs, it's somewhat self-aware and has a 'post modern' quality in its use of Japanese icons and fringe anime culture trope... I usually can't really stand series with those elements, but this one worked for me. The writing and artistic craft behind it as well as the commitment to have the tom-foolery and inside jokes somehwat lead back to interesting territory made it work. To me, it's the only recent anime series that plays the medium on its strengths to put forward a unique vision. So "Folktales ..." is clearly a show for kids and sadly, only a few tales get a proper artistic direction treatment (the animation remains super cheap anyway, but I think that's less of an issue). Quite a few years ago, for a literature class, I undertook a work of comparison of fairy tales across several european and african ethnies. Since then, I take any chance I can get to keep exploring that, and since this series offers that for Japan and didn't modernize it's material; it's gold to me.