Roderick

I was on a big Dutch Japanese culture convention last weekend and saw some episodes of Gainax' Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt from recent years. This is typical Gainax fare: very dynamic, 6-frames a second animation and chock full of punch-in-the-face jokes. If you like that sort of stuff, check it.

Is this a thinly veiled attempt to brag about visiting Venice?

Avenging Spirit is pretty shit. For a Game Boy game it's mediocre, but for today's standard that's... pretty shit. Constantly respawning enemies jumping up and down the screen and poor level design. Really the only redeeming factor is the jumping bodies mechanic that was way ahead of its time, but that doesn't make it a good game.

This man is IN THE FRIDGE while crying while eating. http://cryingwhileeating.com/sam.html

The destruction of Carthage is the oldest meme in existence, and Cato the Elder the original troll

I didn't even know there was an American dub/tweak. I know only the original French version and can assure its brilliance alone.

I would cautiously like to recommend another comedy film that is woefully underlooked a lot of the time: Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra. Do NOT be deceived by the tone of the first and third movies, which were rather saccharine. This one is done by a different director and in my opinion it's a comedic masterpiece. It should say enough that the owners of the A&O franchise hated this movie: that alone tells you how good it is. It manages to juggle well-crafted physical comedy with hilariously cheesy gags and bouts of extreme absurdity, including an interlude about lobsters when the movie would otherwise get too violent to show. Besides French greats like Gerard Depardieu and Christian Clavier (who also performed as Napoléon in the excellent miniseries), it features one-armed French comedian Jamel at his best. Don't miss out on this movie --that goes for everyone here. It's very sincere, very lighthearted, and extremely funny.

Double post, my bad.

ALL BOW DOWN TO THE SPACE POPE

It's the next Tolkien...!

Also, I love the blurbs on books. Do fantasy books still hail every single new entry in the genre as "...the next Tolkien!"? Because that shit is hilarious.

No, then there'd be a chrome dragon or chrome orc on it. This clearly uses color. It's a bumper for an anime DVD publisher.

I NOW BELIEVE

This discussion is awful because there's no proper definition for what we're talking about. What the fuck is filler? All I wanted to say is that I generally finish every game I play, but I dislike it when games artificially pad their length with, for instance, grinding battles. I don't see it as entitlement to criticize that stuff, because it's a critique. Calling it entitlement pulls the rug from under any critique you could have on anything.

You could replace 'filler' for 'rough spots or tedious gameplay'. It does get a little confusing in this thread.

This isn't about entitlement at all. Filler content isn't 'good' gameplay, and I'd be surprised if anyone is waiting for it. People have different breaking points, that much is true, but no designer goes 'we have to put more filler and grinding in our game because that's what games are made of and that's what people want'. No, it's in there out of time constraints and to buff up the length of your game, or it's some experiment to see whether people will continue to play after the main mission is over. That's what is so brilliant about the current generation of games: it's OK now for a game to be ten great, diverse, non-filler hours. That's accepted by the public. Because of that there's no need for games to hit that 'grindy rough spot' anymore, because length is less of an issue.

A nightmare in audio form!

Oh yeah, I forgot about games being too long. That's the reason the only JRPG I've ever finished is Chrono Trigger. The few others I played I always dumped after the nth hour of grinding or stupid story not going anywhere. But I don't encounter that situation very often, because I'm quite deliberate with what I buy and play. That's the reason I so boldly stated I finished everything. I forgot about the existence of bad games that I wouldn't want to finish.

I've certainly never been polled about finishing games, and my consoles are not online so they can't track it. I can safely say I finish all my games. Even the big sprawly ones like Red Dead or Elder Scrolls. I can't imagine not finishing a game I started. What's the point playing it otherwise? It also depends on your take on gaming of course: for me they're stories and it's silly not to finish a story. Episodic stuff, I can actually see myself having less incentive to finish stuff. Installing all those Monkey Islands wasn't a big deal, but having to wait between content can be killing for an attention span. But meh, it's a different thing altogether, can't really compare.

In some plane, and then you're shooting people but you have little bullets and then die a lot. That was my Deus Ex 3 experience!

The intensely weird The Man Who Fell To Earth starring 70s David Bowie. Is this a good movie? No, no it isn't. It's ambitious though and it really tries to be all artsy, tries a little too hard perhaps. It wasn't fun to watch, but at times it was interesting.

I played a bit of Deus Ex 3 on Gamescom, but I think this is typically a game that you can't just pick up and play. I had no idea what to do and as a result it was confusing and difficult. It's impossible to judge solely on fifteen minutes of fumbling about.

The way I view Oblivion is that it's a weird, out of control experiment. At times it's really good, but far more often it makes no sense, poor choices were made and it's easy to 'ruin' the game. I say this knowing full well that I am currently playing a savegame with 114 hours on it.

Haha, I'm absolutely keeping it that way. I am therefor two days! Rayman Origins was great fun. It had a modest presence: about four monitors in the corner of the Ubi stand, completely dwarfed by Assassin's Creed. There were no lines. But because of that, there was a real good vibe there. I started playing with a friend and before long one of the attendants picked up a controller and played along. Just as it was with Ancel's E3 presentation, everyone was having a good time. It's impossible not to with this game.

On the Gamescom in Cologne. Love this game.