ThunderPeel2001

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by ThunderPeel2001


  1. You know, that dog video has my cynicism hairs tingling. Smells like a viral ad for Bud Lite to me. It's presented as the dog's natural reaction to the music, but that's not how dogs react to music, at least not in my experience growing up with them. Head bobbing in time to a beat -- and especially, picking a steady beat out of a swinging, irregular riff like -- and smiling by just turning up the lips, aren't real canine reactions.

     

    The way the lips move, especially around the nose, seems fishy to me as well, but maybe I'm overanalysing that. There's also something about the way the shot is framed that just doesn't sell me as natural and spontaneous either. That big-ass logo arranged just so, the static shot that makes image editing so much easier, the fact that the dog doesn't get distracted or just generally dog around except when a director would want it to, the lack of humans reacting... yeah, call me a jaded killjoy, but I just don't buy any of it. I'd guess that the dog was filmed against a greenscreen, coached to do the basic expression-change thing a few times, maybe shaken lightly out of shot, edited to emphasise the smile and synch it all up with the music, and then superimposed in. 

     

    The musician seems like exactly the kind of guy that would partner up with Bud for a bit of viral cross-marketing either. He has another video where he denies being a "Budweiser representative" but that's not the same as not having made a video with them. He does say it was "really meant to" drive traffic to his own sites, which the vid is caption-plastered with, so given it has about 10 million views he's either a marketing genius or a lucky son of a bitch, even if it is real, spontaneous and has nothing to do with Budweiser. But given the history of fake viral tie-ins, I'm going with the Bud connection.

     

    This has been your daily grinch report from dogface.

     


  2. Yeah it's wired, you guys are missing some really obvious one from my point of view.

    Different people's gaming history's.

    I played lemmings on the zx spectrum which had no music

     

    I had no idea that [REDACTED] was even released on the Spectrum!


  3. May take on Level2 -- didn't do so well :(

     

     

    1. Bubble Bobble

    2. 

    3. Final Fantasy VII

    4. 

    5. 

    6. 

    7. 

    8. 

    9. Speedball 2

    10. 

    11. 

    12. 

    13. 

    14. 

    15.

     

    And finally Level 3!

     

     

    1. 

    2. 

    3. Planescape Torment

    4. Strider

    5. 

    6. Xenon 2

    7. 

    8. 

    9. 

    10. 

    11. Sensible Soccer

    12. System Shock 2

    13. IK+

    14. 

    15.

     

    Maybe that helped fill in a few blanks??


  4. Damn. Level one is hard!!! (I got a few though.)

     

    1. Street Fighter II

    2. Lemmings

    3. Sonic the Hedgehog

    4. Tetris

    5. The Secret of Monkey Island

    6. 

    7. 

    8. GoldenEye

    9. 

    10. Super Mario Bros.

    11. 

    12. 

    13. Daytona

    14. Shadow of the Beast

    15.


  5. Ha. This should be fun. Especially if they just announce the PlayStation 3 Slimmer.

    (Hmm. I guess this time they're trying to get a jump on Micro "first person out of the gate wins" Soft.)


  6. My assessment of it has nothing to do with the changes to the Culture system. Also the Technogical Victory is exactly the same as it is in Civ 3. It's more to do with the less obvious things, like poor presentation of stats (which gets in the way sometimes), a few rough edges from the UI POV, and the lame way the ending is handled.

    Anyhoo, it's still very good, I just wish the high level of polish was present in *every* aspect of the game. (Maybe Gods and Kings adds stuff?)

    (Also, on my Core i7 it still can take an age between turns...! I feel like there's a setting somewhere that would speed it up.)


  7. BigJKO, Nach, Pirate and TP, we all would have believed that you'd also spotted them, you didn't each need to laboriously type them out and spoiler tag them!

     

    Never trust anyone, Ben. Not even yourself. That's the thing I've learned from being on the Idle Forums for nine(!) years!


  8. Every time I've tried to before I've come away disappointed with myself. You really have to put some effort into not being some kind of a Modern Video Game Asshole about it when things are super complicated and difficult (and ugly). Also terrifying.

     

    Indeed. It took me several years of owning the original (yes, I own the original CDs!) before I finally forced myself to get through the game. It was just SO intense, SO freaky (especially when those goddamn spiders appeared), that turning off spawning was the only way I could enjoy the story and atmosphere without needing to change my underwear every two minutes.

     

    The great thing is that the game doesn't seem to "cheat" to get its scares. It's not just about wandering into a pitch dark room and something suddenly going "boo!". Or about bad guys that can move 50 times faster than you. The situation feels real, and the scary moments feel completely earned.


  9. I'm pretty happy to see so many people all over the net having a great time with the game, I feel like the things I've been saying about the game all along have been validated a bit. I always felt like a bit of an apologist, because whenever somebody dug up a copy to check the game out, they almost invariably ended up being disappointed with it.

     

    I came across a post just like that on the Irrational forums... Can't believe they people are let down by this game, but I think expectations may be too high for some.


  10. Let's assume at some point I will actually want to finish this game.  Which character's section/ending would you say was the most worth playing/seeing?  I've only done one playthough (and didn't even finish it) with the Knight, Twins, and Time Traveler.  I really liked the Twins' level, hated the Time Traveler's, and was meh on the Knight, mostly because I had it spoiled in a preview of the game so I knew what was going to happen.

     

    I can't say any one of them was "must see" compared to the others. You might enjoy: Hillbilly, Scientist, Monk, though (the Adventurer is probably the least interest one of them all).


  11. I really enjoyed it. I didn't mind the loss of stacking units. I found that, as per usual, my army fell behind the AI's almost immediately, as I scrambled to get new tech and cooler cities, but in 5 it didn't matter so much. Playing defensively, I could easily take out anyone who attacked my city. Alexander the Great kept insulting me and then attacking me. His army was huge, but he barely made a dent in my civilization -- I lost two cities through the entire game. That's a nice change.

     

    One thing I felt was missing was all the stats! It was much harder to see who was at war with who. What was going on with regard to different things. In the age of info-graphics, I was expecting much improved versions of the ones from Civ 3 -- instead they were just missing. A bit weird! The ending screen was really dull and ugly, too. I know it's not about the ending, but at least in Civ 3 you got some slight emotional satisfaction. You could see how you did against your opponents throughout the game in different areas, etc. In Civ 5 it feels like they dropped the ball there. (Apparently the "space" ending is similarly bland, too -- which is a shame.)

     

    Also, I'm not sure how Culture works in Civ 5. It seems that you win just by spending your "Culture Points" on Social Programs -- as opposed to just having the most awesomest culture in the world that every loves. In Civ 3, if you culture was amazing (many wonders, tons of high-tech cities, etc.), a lone city surrounded by all this would willingly want to become part of your civilization. That never happened in Civ 5, which I thought was odd. Also, there doesn't seem to be "cultural influence" any more -- you just buy hexes when you want them.

     

    Also also, I was confused by the UN. I created the United Nations, then everyone voted -- on what, I don't know... nobody told me -- I got the most votes, and then nothing happened. It was all a bit weird. Does anyone know what the point of that was?

     

    Finally, I thought they did a good job with how the other AIs talk. Rather than say things like, "We demand Spices from your puny nation!" (like in Civ 3), they would be more diplomatic in their threats, making them sound far more reasonable, even when they were just threats. I also enjoyed how they responded to my warmongering -- I got a lot of crap for my actions :)

     

    On the whole, it felt kind of half-finished. Or three quarters finished. I was kind of expecting it to the be the ultimate version of Civ, and in many ways it was, but in others it dropped the ball. I'll have to check out that Gods and Kings DLC!


  12. I did, two trailers ago. What is all this stuff about mutant babies and shepard lamb stuff? i dunno lol!

    I didn't know anything going into Bioshock 1 and it made a huge impact.

     

    Also I didn't play the promotional web game.

    Yeah, and what's all this about self-sustaining floating cities...? Weeee-ird!


  13. Hmm. I wonder if this is purely down to country. The selection of movies on the UK Netflix is astoundingly, almost unbelievably, bad. It's like they went for all the cheapest titles they could. Sure, there's some good ones, but it seems like they padded it out with cheap filler -- like people wouldn't notice.

    But everyone in the US seems to rave about Netflix...?