Ben X

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Everything posted by Ben X

  1. Id's Rage

    Sequel announced. Bethesda publishing, Avalanche developing. I'm not as excited for the prospect of a Mad Max/Just Cause type game set in the Rage universe (which is pretty much Mad Max anyway) as I would be for an FPS that jettisoned all the RPG-lite crap but kept all the fun shooting and nice design. Here's what I posted as I played through the first one a few years ago: (Sorry, @toblix, I went for this thread because it has more gameplay discussion, even though yours was there first.)
  2. And for an Othello blackface triple, here's Anthony Hopkins, with an afro wig that bounces around through the whole play (plus Bob Hoskins as Iago!)
  3. The Big FPS Playthrough MISSION COMPLETE

    Thought so, thanks. Honestly, I was so confused and overwhelmed I wasn't in a position to be offended by anything in this game! Is this the Dan Golding article? EDIT: I found myself vigorously nodding along with that article, as well as this one and this one.
  4. It is a very nice piece of artwork, definitely.
  5. The Big FPS Playthrough MISSION COMPLETE

    Blood Dragon is pretty fun so far. I like the Robocop/Terminator/Predator 80s VHS pastiche mixed with Sega Megadrive cutscene visuals, though they go on too long. And the gloopy laser fire looks nice and Cameron-y. It also mocks tutorialising which was pretty funny, though again it went on too long and then the game actually spent half an hour tutorialising. Speaking of which, I'm already feeling a bit weighed down by all the systems - buying upgrades, freeing compounds, side-missions etc. I know this is the standard Ubisoft game now, but I was hoping for a little more Far Cry 1 and a little less Assassin's Creed. Never mind, I'll just blast around for for as long as it remains fun. I'm having a couple of Bioshock Infinite-type problems with the combat, actually - the weird health system and some poor enemy visibility (mostly due to the gloomy visual scheme), plus slightly floaty shooting. Some of this may be solved by being a bit more stealthy, though.
  6. I didn't get it. Doing a google image search I see that he's Graham the car crash evolution guy. But Fritz didn't make it, right? It's an existing pic from a couple of years ago...
  7. The Big FPS Playthrough MISSION COMPLETE

    Finished. The ending was, as with most of the game, impressive while didactic and hollow. It was cool going to Rapture and then all those other places in quick succession, going through a looping series of doors, but my reaction to the story was finally "so what?" This is why Half Life 2 is heralded as great storytelling - it doesn't tell a story that would be good for a book or a movie or an RPG, it takes a pared down, tropey storyline and tells it mostly through the environment with the occasional fun vignette filled with believable characters. With BI, I barely had a handle on the story most of the time because so many layers of backstory and ongoing twists were being thrown at me, and yet at the same time certain points and themes got hammered over and over again. I couldn't find too much making-of stuff, but here's a review from RPS that mostly aligned with what I thought, though was a bit more forgiving of its flaws. I'd be interested to hear what others here thought of it, especially the themes and narrative. I'm going to skip Zeno Clash 2, as I'm unlikely to enjoy it that much judging from my experience with the first one, and I just want an FPS I can enjoy right now! I'm not convinced Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon will be it, but I suspect I'll at least be able to muck around in it if I get bored, and not feel so obliged to make it all the way through...
  8. The Big FPS Playthrough MISSION COMPLETE

    I hope it's close, I don't know if I can handle being told that Comstock and Fitzroy are the same, or that maybe Elizabeth is creating the other universes, many more dozen times...
  9. The Big FPS Playthrough MISSION COMPLETE

    I finally got some time to play a bit more of this. I just played another huge chunk of it and holy shit I'm still only about 75% through (I just fought Elizabeth's mother in her ghost-ish form in the graveyard). It's feeling really repetitive and the balancing of the powers/weapons/health really does not encourage experimental play or proper use of the levelling-up system, especially the two-weapon system. I also never find the ziplines particularly useful or fun in a firefight because I can never tell where the hell I'm going. I'm tempted to quit, but as I'm not actually stuck and they're still throwing lots of production value at me, I might push through to the end... What was the infamously garbagey bit, @Merus?
  10. Related: homogeny in God Of War reviews leaving problematic aspects of the franchise unexamined
  11. Plug your shit

    Very good! I remember you asking aaaages (maybe years) ago what that music piece was called. Presumably that wasn't for this? (Also what is it called please?)
  12. Marvel movies

    Apparently Hemsworth was complaining a lot about the patch in Ragnarok interviews, and they started CGing it on at some point. Re Valkyrie, apparently you don't see the Taskmaster's ship at the start of IW, so that combined with the "Thanos killed half my people" line has led fans to assume she got away on that ship along with the Kiwi alien and the remaining Asgardians.
  13. Marvel movies

    Appropriately for this thread.
  14. Marvel movies

    Agreed on a lot of stuff there. (I don't think Dinklage was in In Bruges, though.)
  15. Other podcasts

    I'm glad I got that Soundcloud download working, because this 'cast is great! Thanks for the recommendation.
  16. Marvel movies

    I didn't like Infinity War either. It made me appreciate what a good overall job Avengers 1 did despite its flaws, though one could argue that movie had an easier time of it with far fewer characters to juggle. So my Marvel opinion remains 'Iron Man 1, Thor 3 and Jessica Jones 1 are fantastic; the rest of it is a mix of good, solid and awful.' It's telling that those three have very little franchise baggage to deal with...
  17. Jeff Goldblum

    I've been having similar thoughts. But I suspect that his acting career is fading enough that it won't really be a big issue...
  18. Filmmaking

    This reminds me of an anecdote Robert Rodriguez tells on the Dusk Til Dawn commentary (or making of doc, perhaps) - when he was shooting a conversation scene for El Mariachi, he got a ton of shots of a dog watching the actors, knowing that he might have to use it to paper over continuity cracks in the edit. While shooting a similar scene on DTD, he shot a ton of George Clooney reactions, but not before telling him about the El Mariachi trick and that in this scene, George was "the dog". (To Clooney's credit, his reactions are great.)
  19. Far Cry 5

    Far Cry 5 has the worst endings in all of gaming history, apparently.
  20. Movie/TV recommendations

    Yeah, I found the 'title song' segments very self-indulgent without the songs actually being funny or, uh, 'musically good' - needed clever verse lyrics and some different musical styles at least. I generally agree with the defense of the show, but I can totally understand people bouncing off it hard. The thing about Mickey's flaws vs Gus's is that his are all about denial whereas hers are out on front street, so it takes longer for Gus and the other characters to really define his issues - Mickey actually starts dealing with her shit a lot sooner and more honestly than Gus. But this can sometimes feel like the show is not equal in its acknowledgement. I did consider it as an example of a "comedy show interested in nurturing it's characters humanity where they don't come across as immature all the time" which Patrick mentioned as rare in the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend thread (I didn't want to bump that thread with it though as my partner and I have given up on the show). The characters (who I guess are early to mid thirties?) at least act like 22 year olds rather than 12 year olds...
  21. Movie/TV recommendations

    Dollhouse? That ended up amazing but the first few episodes were dreadful.