DanJW

It is well done, as I said. But as Terry Pratchett pointed out, all sci-fi shows feel compelled, should they go on long enough, to do a wild west episode. It's like evil twin plots - it's a bizarre trope that gets repeated over and over. edit: Anyway, new episodes. I thought the higher production values and lack of laugh track worked strangely well. It made it seem a lot sadder, much like the books were, in fact. Then the whole fourth-wall breaking stuff happened and ruined it all --- Oh yeah, I also got around to seeing Death Race recently. It's good car-based fun. But compared to the original Death Race 2000, it is almost laughably tame. The original has a corrupt government, a successful plot against the president, the general public being killed - and deserving it, sex and nudity and all kind of excellent biting satire. The new one... it paints itself as being big and tough and sexy and badass. But then for instance, when an inmate in a prison full of murderers and rapists sees the women navigators arrive (who aren't even nearly as sexy as their 1960's predecessors) he makes a comment along the lines of "I'd like them to suck peanut butter off my toes". You'd what? Really? In prison for X years and that's what you'd like? I guess you don't want to be too crude in front of all these murderers or something. That kind of fallen-short machismo pervades the entire film. Like I said, it's laughable when compared to cojones of the original. Besides that it's good.

Case rested. As Chris has pointed out, just because a game genre is not to your tastes does not make it a threat to you. Chill out.

Things started getting a bit shaky in series 6, when they lost Red Dwarf and Holly and the whole thing became more gimmicky special-fx based. The wild west episode, although well written, is sometimes marked as the exact point where the ideas ran out. They tried to take it back to the bunk-bed dialogue a bit in series 8 (which was always the best stuff), which brought it back from the brink a smidgen. But probably not enough. The first few series really are very well written. The middle series have the best scenarios and ideas (Back to Reality won an award if I'm not mistaken?). It was interesting reading the two parrelel books written by Grant and Naylor seperately. Backwards was much better in terms of writing, but was so dark as to be almost miserable. The Last Human was a lot more easy going, sillier and maybe funnier in places, but was trashy and lacked characterisation.

OK it has clicked now. Repositioning the puzzle pieces was sneaky, and the other thing I was missing was moving and manipulating the enemies to do stuff for you. Finished World 3 now and loved the horizontal time stuff there.

Sheesh the generalized MMO hatred on these forums is becoming neverending these days

OK, that is good to know.

I think one or two puzzles are just down to my platforming skill, or lack of. It's been a while since I played a proper platformer, so I don't know at what point my patience ran out for having to bounce along multiple enemy heads, some of which are in mid air, in order to reach something. I just don't find that stuff fun any more, and I feel kind of bad about it

I think I have sadly left my platforming days behind me. I like the game, but can only handle it in small doses. I'm going to assume that the methods to get the inaccessible puzzle pieces will become evident as I play through the later worlds. For the sake of my sanity.

Idle Thumbs: where dreams can come true.

Unless you were one of those writer-directors. You know, like the ones that exist.

I'd be impressed if he manages to write copy for an entire MMO by himself...

Heh crossed my mind too, but I think not. In this interview Tornquist mentions the game having puzzles of some kind, enough so that you can focus on those instead of the combat. Having a wild guess here, but what with the mystical alphabet motif and the constraints of having puzzles in an MMO (where the answers are quickly passed around), I'm betting on some kind of randomly generated decryption game. Still, interesting.

sweeeet! But dammit I'm working tonight

Ideal for an MMO then?

I quite enjoyed Monsters Vs Aliens (so I guess my taste is utterly different to bbX1138 ). As with most Dreamworls productions it is not as layered as a Pixar movie, but it is was an easy watch. I really liked the character design and animation (on the humans even more than on the monsters in fact), the 50's B-movie references were appreciated and there were a fair number of decent gags and funny lines ("Have fun exploooowwwding!"). Good voice cast too: Hugh Laurie, Will Arnett, Stephen Colbert, Seth Rogan, Kiefer Sutherland etc

Hey, AoC was good. For the first 20 levels. Anyway Funcom are essentially just the publisher, and although they have poached some of the ex-conan team (apparently so as to avoid its mistakes) it is a different developer, and Rangar Tornquist is a very different lead.

"This game is so good, that you are already dead, you just don't realise it yet" - IGN.com

Yeah having read through your post, I think we disagree slightly. Like with your reference to Lord of the Rings, and recently the Watchmen movie - you claim that bits should be rewritten, whereas I think the original story could work fine as long as it is shot well. Some parts of Colossus will not work well in a movie. I don't think they should re-write those parts though, I just think they should film them differently. In Hollywood script is king, but I think I appreciate good cinematography more. Everyone turns games into action movies, but maybe their best bits would come across as mood pieces, in the ouvre of No Country For Old Men.

Aha music! Here's the cream of the latest series of Flight of the Conchords: cl_VnvuHZ48

I think I know what you mean JamesM. For instance, the horse-riding controls in Shadow of the Colossus communicate to the player that the horse, Agro, has a mind of his own. You can steer him, but not drive him (indeed many early - stupid - reviewers of the game complained about this). Since anyone not playing the game can't see this, in a film adaptation we would need different ways to show Agro's personality and importance as a character. In most holiwood stuff this would be a heavy handed scene where he does something comical to Wanda, like knock a bucket of water over his head and then people laugh and say "that horse, he has a mind of his own ahahaha" In a way, a lot of the game is about a boy and his horse, all alone except for each other (like the best bits in the I Am Legend movie). That's exactly the kind of theme that the scriptwriters are likely to miss.

I rather not take the risk, and just have the film canned. It might turn out well, but it will more likely be terrible; and then it becomes even more difficult to tell non-gamers what is so special about the game. They will just say "but the film was so bad".

Shame you guys weren't that impressed by Dragon Age. I'm looking forward to it, although admittedly because of the toolset more than anything else. But as for the world and setting - Bioware tend to write for the long run, so it may take a few hours to get fully absorbed into it, at which point you get hooked.

It will have a dastardly human antagonist. It will have a loveable comedy human sidekick. It will have swashbuckling action. It will probably have parkour. I will have too many people! And too much dialogue. The damn game is about loneliness. Writing in a star-studded cast will totally ruin the quiet contemplation of desolate beauty. There is absolutely no way they will nail the atmosphere, and even more upsetting they probably don't even know what that atmosphere is.

Terrible idea.

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