vimes

Sooo, is it better on phones ?

Urmm, I just realized I forgot to report my last reads to the Book Club! On miffy495's and my current art director's advice I read Hell's Angels - a Penguin classic, really ? - and enjoyed its flawed objectivity thoroughly. Thompson is citing sources, facts, statistics and cross references testimonies, but he's enthralled by his own depiction of the Angels - society bystanders with no heroic status and no 'higher' philosophical outlook. I felt like he was as fascinated/giddy about it as mainstream public seemed to be about the gang-rapers image. I really enjoyed the book when the money/fame aspect came into play since Thompson opinion sway in the opposite direction and there's thinly veiled disappointment peering through most sentence. The epilogue is fantastic in that aspect.

As I was catching up on XBLA goodness yesterday, I bought it after a few puzzles in trial : I loved the overall art direction at first sight (feat. a properly tweaked rim light shading, gotta love it) and the gameplay is nice too. I hoped it won't be too long though - since Meatboy and Costume Quest, I fear simplistic gameplay overstaying their welcome - but the "halfway there" give me the feeling it won't. BTW, anybody played both XBLA and handheld versions? I get the impression it suits mobile gaming a bit better ... and coop on two phones- if it exists - would be quite rad.

I don't agree with capitalism, communism or any monolithic political ideal because they all make the assumption that, in order to work, every agent of a society would play by the rules they define. This is true - and you can hear people on both side of the board saying 'Oh, but wait, this isn't real *****ism, pure *****ism would work' - but it's also completely insane. To me, this assumption is the reason that 1) the incarnations of communism and capitalism never matched the theory and never will. At worst they are corrupted (capitalism now and during the industrial revolution, communism during Stalin's reign) and at best, they are watered down (CDU/CSU, depending how you see it). 2) most institutions trying to apply those theory turned into dictature that destroyed the opposition because they just didn't know how to handle them. (chinese repression, union busting) Also, video I find funny: umDr0mPuyQc

I watched The Fighter on Saturday... I promised myself not to be too easily impressed by Bateman, but geez, is he good in this one. He might be a dick, but he oozes with talent and dedication : I particularly like the very last scene in which he conveys perfectly that Dicky is equally happy to have helped his brother and desperate that , if it wasn't for his addiction, he could have experienced this first hand. Actually, the movie would be quite forgettable if Batman wasn't there. Well, that's not entirely true : some of the third roles (the trainer and the dad) were great and I can still appreciate the fact that they forcibly didn't take the Oscarish or Ken Loach routes : the movie knows how to make fun of the characters flaws instead of sanctifying them. Which is kind of refreshing.

You should have seen me skiing though security while sporting a japanese woman in Yukata on my right biceps. Yeah, there are definitely a bunch of things to see. I'll be definitely go back next year in Spring or Autumn to see more of the countryside; Winter not being the best time to go into mountains or rural areas. Also, for anyone who wants; I've uploaded photo albums of Fukuoka, Hiroshima and Miyajima.

Nice coincidence, I just went to a performance of this piece by the MSO in Melbourne about a month and a half ago! I didn't know it beforehand and was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. How is it, working on a set with so many musicians ?

Back from a monster of a 15 days, 7 city, South to North train-trip in Japan. Except from Tokyo everything was very great due to the sightseeing, hicking, and meeting strange/awesome people in the guesthouse and backpackers. Kyoto, Hiroshima and the region around Sendai were the highlights with some quasi literal ming blowing moments when stumbling upon the Todai-ji Temple in Nara, the Shukkei-en garden in Hiroshima and the succession of the Gion district, the trail of Temples, Shrines and nice neighborouds leading to Fushimi_Inari-taisha in the east part of Kyoto. If you plan to go in those cities do not get any info about these in advance to let those surprise you even more. I finished my trip with a skiing day in Teine - 30 minutes from Sapporo in Hokkaido, a small station that features a ferries wheel and a rollercoaster halfway to the top (close in winter, but still ) as well as a view of the ocean when you go down the highest part of the resort. Very kickass and kind of cheap. I started at 9 AM and stopped 6 PM ... 2 hours later I was on a plane back to Singapore. Xtreeeeeeeeeeeme! The whole thing put me in the mood to wish a MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR to the thumb community and meaning it

I also recommend Pragues sttongly. If you're around Paris or the East part of France from some reason, reason, take a trip to Colmar and Metz which is awesome in winter (respectively 1 hour and 2 hours from Paris) In the South, I reckon that Carcassone is the best medieval city you can find and on your way, you can stop in Dordogne - birthplace of any good food in France including foi gras, Bergerace wine and awesome 'peasant' recipes. You could stop in Bordeaux for a few days, enjoy food on a one day trip to Perigueux or Sarlat and, another day, you could also check out the Dune du Pyla on the Atlantic shore (it's an hour from Bordeaux). From there to Italy, maybe you can stop in : Sanary-sur-Mer [the nicest small town around my god-awful hometown Toulon] Le Thoronet Abbey the awesome Aix-en-Provence which is safe and has interesting stuff happening all the time on the account of it being a student town Antibes which has a kickass Picasso museum and a good Jazz festival in July. . I you can take a trip to Corsica, say so, I'll have some more suggestions - some of those might require a car rental though. I wish I could help you in you couch crashing, backyard camping scheme but I'm not in France anymore... hop this helped though.

The body and facial animations still look very rigid

Not related to the game, but the facial animations and the rendering on the guy being interrogated are nothing short of fantastic

I've just gobbled Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas in two days and was surprised to find that - even though less grotesque than the movie - I enjoy the same kind of moments in both. Everything about the lawyer was a complete miss again and if I enjoy the description of each drugs effects this time around, it was really because for the dry writing style than anything else. What I kept looking forward to were the short and lucid analysis that pop between those, like the wave speech... I was really impressed by those and might read the Campaign Trail books because of these.

My GotY would definitely be LIMBO. Yes, I just quoted myself:getmecoat.

Yep, it's my first Dostoyevsky, but I didn't mean that the book's serialization was hurting the structure. It just seemed that having constant delivery for two years might explain why small pockets of new topic and some very peculiar narrative devices popped up every now and then; without being foreshadow anywhere. I understood it as the author exploring new ideas he suddenty wanted to explore without the ability to retrofit them but that might be wrong.

I've recently launched Plants vs Zombies as part of the operation "Playing all my steam games at least once"; and before I knew it it had devoured 8 hours of my life. I finished the adventure mode and the puzzles, but I still can't decide how good the game actually is. One thing for sure, it really is evily well paced : new elements were being introduced right at the very moment I was considering calling it a night. The execution is stellar and the gameplay rules combine effortlessly, but somehow, it seems a bit underused : I ended up using only a fraction of the plants (not enough sun) and once I had figured out the winning combination for each setting, I never really had to rethink it thoroughly.

I completely forgot to write about it - not that it's super important - but I've vanquished The Brothers Karamazov about 2 weeks after my initial post. It's a monster of a book, that really bears the mark of being serialized over several years : a bunch of characters and themes are introduced very late in the book and the whole narrative structure oscillate between trying to paint all aspect of a small and self contained community and plotting encounters between pairs of character to stage a clash of their behaviors and beliefs. The latter is kind of confusing at first, because Dostoyevsky writes as if he completely adopts the character's point of view as he's voicing it (there's a narrator to the tale but who he is is particularly confusing) which leads to having opposite points of view expressed with the same sincerity a few pages apart... I had never read that kind of stuff before and it's kind of inspiring because, what he ends up constructing is a character-centric moral system in which he doesn't seem to have any influence on. It's not true of course but he's so good that it appears so. Anyway, apart from the passion oozing from every pore of each character and the hysterics that seem to drive most female characters, it's pretty modern and, as far as narrative structure goes, it's something I'll definitely champion in gaming. I've also finished a Tale of Two Cities, which I didn't find 'special' except when Dickens neglected his main characters to focus on the french revoltees. I love how he depicts the revolution has a monstruous event whose legitimate roots couldn't prevent it from instantly mimicking the barbary it's reacting against. It goes back and forth between empathy and disgust and I really enjoyed the feeling this creates. There are a few allegorical segments that are really worth reading, but the main plot felt completely bland to me. BTW, the book can be read for free on Google Books.

I'm not sure this pessimism is well deserved since the series went through 3 reinvention already, 2 of which were mostly successful : I found Legend/Underworld new climb, exploration and puzzles mechanisms quite nice and I had a bunch of fun with The Guardian of Life coop. I don't see why the new direction seems so terrible : I see it as an opportunity to make a more accessible version of Lost in Blue gameplay, strongly mixed with with actions/climbing components and maybe with a hint of Myst for environmental puzzle?

I joined the game as Agilulfe.

I played it a few times and dropped it, because I'm not that much of a poker fan and, playing on the most chatty option, I ran out of new banter after half a dozen game. HOWEVER, the game is incredibly successful at its most difficult ask, which is to bring those characters together and have it make sense. No surprise for Max & Strong Bad, but Tycho is a perfect 10 - and I wouldn't have bet on it at all. I'd be more nuanced about The Heavy - the facial expression and the neck-bending look-at were disappointing and I wish you'd use more of the "Meet the Heavy" persona and range of expression rather than going full-on ingame persona. But, heh, that's a valid choice too. Anyway, I, for one, found the poker personalities - how they played vs their stereotype - to be very well done. Another wish though : make The Inventory a more atmospheric place, because it is very, very bland right ... there doesn't seem to be any history to it. And, also, if there's a next game, I think an awesome thing would be to have a brand new character for the host ... I dream of Claud Eggerton Eggerton Greene in this role, but it's taking the dream too far, isn't it ?

Err, Tim Schafer described what a publishing contract was and people got angry and confused.

A big part of the Arcanum soundtrack is bound to make you very sad, in a very beautiful way. ftvpi-6Z6qw You can also download it and cry endlessly for free.

Anybody in for the RUSE pack ? There are two of us already so we need 4 more.

I like very much what they showed so far but I was surprised it's once again a costume/ability based game; I don't say it's going to be the same as Costume Quest but the coincidence is intriguing.

I used to think like Thunderpeel - mainly because of the action phase of Full Throttle - but if I noticed that the weak gameplay points of Psychonauts and Brutal Legend comes from the level design than game design. Anyway, it might be interesting to know how much of Schafer is involved in this side of things when his games ventures out of the adventure genre , since Erik Robson seems to have taken the helm of that on Psychonauts and Brutal Legend (apparently now working at Valve ?!).

If you're doing an analysis, all your points are very important. But in the case of a review - as in, what the writer think of the game"- only 1) is mandatory, because the value and uniqueness of the review comes from the writer's 'natural' knowledge or lack of knowledge in 2) and 3). In some case, if 2) and 3) are done solely the sake of the review, I think it can really hurt its validity, since it's a completely artificial process. It's like watching all the Kubrick's movies and reading all the interviews and analysis before watching The Shining and going "Well, this is a movie about Indians". For me it would have no value at all.