Udvarnoky

Zelda II is basically an RPG, and a well-made one. Its only sin is falling very much outside of the Zelda template (both in design and difficulty), but that's not really its fault because there was no template yet.

And you're even wrong about Zelda II, so it's a remarkably consistent series.

Twilight Princess is pretty good despite what its unappealing art style and obnoxious overuse of fog tries to convince you.

I always thought the significance of putting the bank in West Clock Town in the original was because that positioned it right by the trading post.

I am so disgusted. I just lost my first batch of real progress because playing the Song of Time does not save the game as it does in the original. Good remake, though. The differences are minor, but I'm noticing every last one of them.

They can't possibly top the original art, but they don't need to so long as the F5 key does what it's done for the previous efforts.

GRRM's publisher indicates that Winds of Winter will not be published in 2015. You look surprised... "I'm sorry, I must've put it on too high."

Well, it seems like it's both. It's easier in the sense that the camera is less atrocious (a big issue with the original game) and apparently his weak spot is more explicit. On the other hand, it looks like they've expanded the battle somewhat with this platform disappearing stuff!

Monkey Island 2 was showing great improvement, on the other hand. Anyway, I think we can trust Double Fine to not carry over bad work. But if time and money was already spent on a DOTT update effort, they'd be stupid not to take a look.

Oh, well if they're speaking negatively of the game's quality then they've pretty much inoculated themselves against credibility anyway. Just bein' real.

I don't have the context for the statement, but from where I'm standing that comes off as them saying that Majora's Mask isn't a accurate representation of the series as a whole. Which is the truth, but it's a poor way of articulating it. There's no reason it couldn't be your first Zelda game. Just don't expect any others you play to feel quite like it. If they were talking about plot, then the suggestion is even more ridiculous, because to the extent that the Zelda saga even has an overarching storyline that matters (which it doesn't, at all, for the record), Majora's Mask is a standalone, even spinoffish installment. The kinship with Ocarina is rooted entirely in the fact that they share an engine and feature the same incarnation of the protagonist. There's nothing important about knowing that, though.

Hey, everybody remember Mixnmojo? It is reporting that Double Fine will be given the assets for the DOTT: SE that LucasArts Singapore was developing so that they can see if any of it is worth salvaging. Turns out it might very well be. My opinion? If they offer classic mode, and if the soundtrack is as well done as was the case with all of these remakes thus far, the price of admission is justified before we even consider the merit of the new art. Also, I'll be ecstatic if they can find the original voice files.

You know, the Rifftrax for Crystal Skull is not some of their best work, but there's a part that gets me every time. It's during a scene toward the end of the movie where the characters are looking at the murals in the cave. There's a close-up where Indy enters frame looking at Oxley with a grin that can only be described as a leer. Kevin Murphy chimes in with: "You got any pot?" It's an immature line, but the delivery is perfection.

Anything that can be enumerated is lost when you go back in time. This is more or less addressed by the bank and the fact that the trading post is right across from it.

Certainly.

I wasn't trying to zero in on "discovery" necessarily, but pointing out that the movies couch themselves in the romance of a particular era (or, more accurately, the movie version of a particular era). Indy was designed for a world of the dogged, square-jawed hero whose hat never falls off. It's a somewhat specific kind of adventure brand with ties to a specific time period, and I'm not sure it can survive much past what Crystal Skull dragged it to, at least not without being modified to the point where it's unrecognizable. You can still capture the "spirit" of Indy with a modern day tale, as has been attempted with Romancing the Stone and Sahara and Uncharted, but if you wanna use the name you've got to assume the baggage. And of course even some of those off-brand Indy movies have chosen the early 1900s, such as The Mummy and that horrifying 1994 Tarzan movie that Disney for some reason called "The Jungle Book."

Well, not to diminish your overall point that it's standalone, which it is, but it's definitely made explicit that this is the link from Ocarina, because he's on a quest to reunite with Navi the fairy, is riding Epona, and there's even a flashback featuring Ocarina's Zelda. These elements are why people refer to it as a direct sequel in the first place. Anyone find it interesting that while 95% of the repurposed models from Ocarina are different characters (to support the "parallel world" thing), there are a select few that are the same? The witches in the swamp are Koume and Kotake, just as in Ocarina, and it seems to be suggested that the Happy Mask Salesman is an absolute. It's possible that Guru-Guru (organ grinder of "Song of Storms" fame) may be the same dude as well.

The problem with that is Indy is very much tied to a specific era. It's not like James Bond where you can adapt him to any given time period. Sure, you can update the decade to accommodate Ford's age and adjust your pulp influences accordingly, as Crystal Skull successfully did with the 50s. (And I say that sincerely; the movie's failings lie elsewhere.) But it must always be a period piece. And there's a brutal ceiling there - can you bring Indy to a time more modern than the 50s/60s? The whole point of Indy is that he lives in a world where places are still uncharted, where a lost city in the jungle still felt plausible. Beyond a certain era, that would be the wrong kind of ridiculous. You'd have to start making pretty fundamental changes to make that work, at which point it's probably not Indiana Jones. The best way to handle a reboot is to concoct some storyline that crosscuts between Harrison as old Indy and Pratt (or whomever) as Indy in his prime. Have old Indy make some discovery that ties into an unresolved adventure he had in the 30s that justifies this structural choice. (If it was up to me, I'd divide it 50/50 or even give Ford's narrative more focus.) In this way you get to properly send-off Harrison and organically introduce your new actor, and then you can make new dedicated Pratt movies after that.

Some of the info about these altered boss fights are coming to light.

Time slows down when you tell it to. I believe the only place in the game that time doesn't pass is inside the Clock Tower.

I don't know how plausible such an effort would have really been. At the very least there's probably little they could have done about the cutscenes. Better to just leave the game in the aspect ratio the camera angles were composed for instead of monkeying with it.

If it was fun, my five paragraph rant would have been precluded. My expectations were tempered when I walked into the theater - I'm brutally aware of the law of diminishing returns. I was expecting something inferior to Last Crusade. What I got was something inferior to Always.

I wasn't really referring to this thread. When the film came out, those elements were definitely consensus defects among the general reaction I was exposed to. "Nuked the fridge" became a meme, for some dumb reason. I don't find Shia bad in this movie from a performance standpoint. It's more: why does Indy need a son? The movie does an inadequate job of answering that. The problem is that the movie has six different versions of what it wants to be and does justice to none of them. There is definitely a decent Indy movie to be made about the character and a greaser sidekick. Or about him and Marion reuniting (see rejected script). Or about him and his morally challenged WWII buddy played by Ray Winstone. Or about him and his old college buddy gone mad. But at a certain point in its development the movie needed to pick like two of those and do something worthwhile with them.

The gameplay looks marvelous. Like Grim, this seems such a tastefully done update.

Most of the people who hate Crystal Skull do a strangely good job of overlooking what actually sucks about the movie, which is the fact that it has no momentum, thrilling action sequences nor narrow escapes of any kind...you know, the tenets of an Indiana Jones movie. People instead bizarrely point to elements like the 1950s, aliens, implausible set pieces, or Shia Labeouf. These people are wrong. The maligned Doom Town sequence is actually one of the movie's closest flirtations with an authentic Indiana Jones movie because at least it's a classic "How's he gonna get outta this one?" scenario. Where the hell were those? Indiana Jones spends this movie helping the Russians and/or being an indifferent interpreter. The third act is seriously kicked off when he proclaims "Because it told me tooooo" in response to why they should even bother to proceed to the lost city. No stakes, no narrative propulsion, they just may as well trudge onward into the climax because hey they're here. There's a better version of this movie with fewer supporting characters where it's Indy, and not John Hurt, who is forced to look at the skull and goes crazy, and the rest of the protagonists are forced to follow him to Akator because he's possessed by some malevolent alien force while spouting out guttural menace, Sophia Hapgood style. Why isn't Indy allowed to be proactive in this movie, even if he ends up screwing it up? The warehouse scene was a great opportunity for him to try to outsmart the Russians. Oh, he's tricking them into giving him their ammunition - he must be up to something! Nope, turns out he really was just helping them, and his big plan was to drop his rifle on the ground and run away. And he isn't even allowed to solve the obelisk puzzle toward the end. It could have been a classic moment where he uses his wits, but instead they just already know what to do, and this nice practical effect is a payoff to nothing. Wasted opportunities everywhere. Like the fifty spear-wielding warriors that they do jack shit with. Or the fact that they had the badass jungle cutter vehicle, which 80s Spielberg would have had a FIELD day with, would have staged some epic fight on ending with a Ruskie falling into the blades. But in this movie? They just blow it up right away. Fuck off! And yes, the lighting choices were terrible. Let's shoot the movie on film to show how we're going old-school, then completely defeat the point by going with some washed out, diffusion filtered, digitally graded bullshit aesthetic. Good job; the whole hideous movie looks like it was shot in front of a green-screen. I also contend that the movie was hurt by not having any principle photography in South America. They didn't need much - just a little bit of trekking footage to soothe away the loudly declared reality that the characters are just hopping from soundstage to soundstage. It worked for Temple of Doom. There's more intrigue and authentic footage of Peru in the first thirty seconds of than there is in the whole movie. Fuck bringing Marion back (and obfuscated her name for no reason at the beginning, as if it makes sense and as if she isn't ON THE POSTER) if all they were going to do was have one decent reunion scene, but then keep her around as background fodder for an hour except when she deliberately drives onto a rubber tree knowing that she's going to survive, because she knows she's a character in a movie. Fuck the fact that this movie brings in a compelling cold war paranoia angle and does nothing with it. Fuck the fact that Indy happens to be related to everybody for no good reason. Fuck the fact that they have a talent like Ray Winstone and give him nothing to do. And fuck the fact that they mothballed a way better script, which for all its silliness actually had memorable dialog, fun characters and thrilling moments. Not bad otherwise. 7/10