Ben X

Moderators
  • Content count

    6169
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Ben X

  1. My guess for what the Ba'ul would be: I'm still holding out a sliver of hope that this is the actual double-twist truth.
  2. Filmmaking

    Twin Peaksy!
  3. Netflix Originals

    The final half-season of Kimmy Schmidt came out a while back, and boy that show really fizzled out. I loved the first season, felt the second dipped a little then the third one got better again. But season 4 has just been really aimless and, worse, not that funny. Where before it had that 30 Rock feel of meticulous yet effortless, you could really hear the gears grinding by the end
  4. Half-Life 3

    Ha ha, was just about to report it!
  5. Plug your shit

    Nice design!
  6. I'll tell you something I learned a long time ago: other people are idiots.
  7. Movie/TV recommendations

    The Leftovers, Veep, Flight Of The Conchords. Barry is supposed to be good. The Wire, obv.
  8. Half-Life 3

    I want Half-Life 2: Episode 3, following Laidlaw's story outline and in the same (or similar) version of the Source engine as the other episodes. Push some psychedelic visuals and mechanics but nothing too revolutionary. Then the Campo Santo cabal can make Half-Life 3.
  9. Half-Life 3

    You alright there, Mington?
  10. Designer Notes 44: Clint Hocking - Part 2

    Really great interview. Hocking seems a little spiky at times, but gives some great stuff. Did I understand correctly that there is a part three planned? I agree with him about games often trying to pack too much story in. The Half-Life games may have wholly scripted narratives, but their storytelling works so well because they know not to bog it down in tons of pedantic detail.
  11. Movie/TV recommendations

    Yep, agreed. Sad to see a non-perf-cap Zemeckis movie get such poor reviews...
  12. Justice League film

    Really?! Wow. I haven't seen it but I didn't expect it to be any good. What's your opinion of any other Transformers movies you've seen?
  13. Quitter's Club: Don't be ashamed to quit the game.

    Gave up on Ghostbusters The Game, as it was dreadful. Simply busting a ghost is so fiddly and messy, and despite all the pointless different weapon modes it's pretty much all you do, just trying to wrangle the systems into alignment over and over again. The storytelling's really clunky as well - dull video gamey shit, boring dialogue, badly directed. Also, the player-character, "Rookie", looks like a first pass attempt at a Dan Ackroyd model, it's weird. I feel like what they should have done was make it tricky to get the ghosts in your beam, but once you do it's simple to get them to the trap, so the real challenge is to catch them without doing too much damage to the properties and therefore making a loss on the job. With some light RPG stuff it could have been like the movies where it's basically just a regular extermination business.
  14. Lego Movies

    Trailers are out for the sequel. Interestingly, (spoilers for stuff in this trailer)
  15. Marvel movies

    Saw Into The Spider-Verse today and while it's more tenuously connected to the MCU than Homecoming, it's still i"n association with Marvel" so may as well put it in here. It is, for my money, hands down the best Spider-Man film ever (bearing in mind I wasn't a huge fan of the Raimi ones). Effortlessly blends a variety of visual styles and riffs on the audience familiarity with Spidey's backstory while using all of the character's (characters') iconography to full effect. Funny, exciting, touching and intricate without being over-worked. EDIT: oh, and Venom was laughably bad.
  16. Justice League film

    Saw Aquaman. It's visually gorgeous, Momoa is charming and that Sicily action sequence is great, but overall this is a mess. Scuppered by the lead character being introduced in a previous film and yet still having a ton of origin stories, lore and Atlantean politics to get through, the narrative is all over the place. It's filled with tropey beats (in the wrong order) and characters and most of the action is either rote post-Kingsman punching or rote CG battles. Even the music can't decide what it wants to be, flitting between wailing guitar, orchestral and 80s electro. Amusing sidenote (spoiler for incredibly obvious reveal): Definitely better than Green Lantern, but I thiiink I'd still rather watch Chronicles Of Riddick again over re-watching this.
  17. Kickstarters

    You'll all be pleased to know a new Larry game just came out last month
  18. Movie/TV recommendations

    Managed to see Sorry To Bother You at the local indie cinema and was quite disappointed. It's a load of moderately interesting ideas thrown at a tired cliche of a plot, and it doesn't get going for at least the first hour - this really could have done with at least twenty minutes trimming off. As others have noted, it has touches of Idiocracy, Kaufman and Gondry about it, but the thing I was reminded most of was Gremlins 2 - that's the level of satirical sophistication it was playing at. Not necessarily a bad thing, but here the story drags too much to make up for it.
  19. Psychonauts 2

    Official first trailer!
  20. I watched some of these and enjoyed them but I know basically zero about the game so I don't think I fully appreciated what was going on!
  21. Do y'all have any particular recommendations for a good one of these to watch?
  22. No way, I'm looking forward to the Twitch streams!
  23. The sequel can go in this thread too. Outside of about ten minutes of legit good body swap comedy, this whole movie is overworked and empty. (And I actually don't think the original is that sugary; it has a feeling of real danger and mischief, and Williams' character is dealing with PTSD, racial guilt and father issues - but y'know, for kids.)
  24. Doctor Who

    Shockingly, there seems to have not been a single discussion of Doctor Who on these forums. Well, I was at the in-laws' for a couple of days recently and took advantage of their tv licence to watch all of the Whittaker episodes so far. Spoilered not for plot but for those who might get upset reading the mainly negative opinions of someone who's never been a huge fan of the series but has seen a fair amount of New Who anyway: Any Whovians or casual fans here?