Ben X

I played a little more of this today, and I am getting really bored of it. Once you get used to the level of production values, you're left with the gameplay and storytelling, both of which are pretty damn sluggish. I just played through a fight where I'm supposed to be using the ziplines and Elizabeth's tears, but the layout was a mess and combined with how difficult it is to locate enemies and the imprecise shooting, it really fell flat. I'm starting to wonder if I need to increase the FOV, because it feels pretty boxed in at times. That might help with locating stuff. I've never bothered touching it in other games. [EDIT: I've now put the slider up to full.] I've just got to Finkton Docks and apparently I'm only a third of the way through the game. I'm not sure how much more of this I can be bothered with. I might try to just run through it as quickly as possible without taking detours or looking for coins and the like, and see if I can enjoy it that way.

It's a commentary on how their lives are stuck in destructive circles. This is the thesis of the movie, John Wayne even says it at the end.

Heh, fair enough. Thanks for the response, everyone!

Ha ha, I was about to ask, "Who?!"

Sorry, I mispoke; I wasn't inferring that from your quotes. I meant to agree with them and say that I personally would expand them out...

I wasn't joking as such. I was saying that 'Pyrrhic victory' is not a synonym for failure. And the fact that there is no such thing as a Pyrrhic failure was part of my point - a Pyrrhic victory is a victory otherwise the phrase has no meaning.

Just to reiterate, not my reasoning! So that's good to hear, I will continue to follow this modern trend Not sure if I'm understanding your point, but in French, 'petite' would be pronounced 'pet-eat' because of the 'e' on the end (as opposed to 'petit').

Nick endorsing the Strider speedrun on the IIT cast reminded me to catch up on this. I just watched the Jedi Knight Academy and Opposing Force runs amongst others, and I think the quotes above could be expanded out to "I wish the runners, commentators, donators and viewers would stop trying to be funny." Apart from that, some very cool speedruns!

I was told the other day that when you say something is your forte, that's pronounced like 'fort'. But if you're saying music should be played forte, that should be pronounced 'fort-ay', because while both words come from the same latin root, the former comes to us via French while the latter comes via Italian. Would people agree with this? Hoping it's wrong so I can keep pronouncing them both fort-ay!

No, they're victories. That's why they're pyrrhic victories and not pyrrhic failures.

Agreed on Cloverfield Paradox (terrible) and The Good Place (fantastic).

It gets even trickier when something like the Elisha Dushku thing happens - she recently claimed that she was sexually assaulted during the production of True Lies by the stunt coordinator. How do you vote against someone in that role with your wallet?

As I understand it, the 'death of the author' critical theory is about separating authorial intent from the audience reading - i.e. it doesn't matter if that's not what the author intended, even if they've said so explicitly, it's how I read it and that's just as valid. Perhaps it also covers separating the author as a person from their work, though.

I got the impression from the special features that the dialogue was mostly improvised, which came up with a lot of misses. Also the structure isn't great because the first half of the movie is two groups separately discovering something that the audience knows from the start. I enjoyed the second half a lot more, when it started moving the plot forward and doing stuff I wasn't expecting. EDIT: in fact, here's what I wrote at the time:

Why aye, etc.

Wooo, Newcastle hardcore!

I haven't really been up on the music scene since 2002, but a couple of bands I've found out about via the internet recently are Skating Polly and Babymetal. SP is a two-piece indie rock group made up of two sisters who started when they were about 12. Even their early stuff is really good, even if it hews very close to existing bands' sounds, and they're always changing up their style. I recommend binging them on YouTube. Here's one of their more recent, Veruca Salt-y tracks: Babymetal are a hilarious J-pop band who chuck a load of heavy metal or hip-hop into their songs. This one is amazing:

It's been almost two decades since I saw them, but I remember Beat Takeshi's films Sonatine and Hana-Bi being great.

I would never do something like this, it goes against all my principles. I mean, a camrip? Yuck!

I really enjoyed the first two episodes of the season's second half! I recommend everyone who was wavering (and even those who have dropped it at any point) to give them a watch. Orville really doesn't sound like my cup of tea from your descriptions of it...

Yep. Although I realised later the title we both quoted is a little misleading, as it was just one MRA rather than a concerted group effort (which may be a reason no one was interested).

Beat you to it by 5 posts (no one seemed interested).

I was even a little tempted to immediately start a replay of Dishonored, see if I could approach the early levels with more finesse, but I decided against it. Maybe some day. So, Paul's comments are spot on. Bioshock Infinite feels really linear compared to the other games. I've got to the Hall Of Heroes, which is I guess a couple of hours in, and I don't feel like I've been let loose yet. It's all very nicely presented and everything, so it's not a big problem, but combined with the simplification of the mechanics (two-weapon system, no holding onto medkits, autosave only) and a lot of hand-holding with health/salts/ammo never in short supply, a regenerating shield, and Booker and Elizabeth waffling on at me to make sure I understand what to do at all times, it feels closer to a walking simulator than a shooter at the moment. I really hope it opens up soon and lets me use the skylines and vigors tactically for firefights. I don't necessarily mind them making more of a linear shooter than the previous games, but it at least needs some proper action bubbles - so far it feels like I'm stuck in a loop of the first fight in an RPG where I'm really just quickly shooting a couple of people so I can get back to admiring the art design and then rummaging through it for spare change.

MRAs Make 46-Minute Cut Of ‘The Last Jedi’ That Edits Out All The Women

No, although it is tempting from a story point of view as I know they tie in with Rapture (and perhaps the first game's events?) more.