Ben X

This may have been asked for previously, or I may be missing it, but a spoiler tag button on the Reply toolbar would be lovely!

No, iirc Mars wasn't anywhere in the original short story. It's a pretty hilarious story about So the first film has pretty much nothing in common with it after the initial "tried to get a fake memory implant, couldn't because some shit was already there" set-up. Anything the 2012 film has in common with the first apart from that is all from the Arnie flick, basically. Twig, you're missing out on a few great Arnie films: Terminator, Predator, Total Recall, True Lies. Perhaps a few other good ones, too. They're not great because of Arnie, but they happen to have him in them and use him in an effective way. He's a little wonky in True Lies, but the film constantly surrounds him with lots of good stuff so it gets away with it. Also, Temple Of Doom is the third best Indy film.

Some of the comments on that story are incredible.

Lucas wrote over some existing expanded lore already with the prequels, right? iirc, on a special feature for one of the films, they talk about how there are levels of canon, with GEORGE canon being the top, indisputable level and anything that clashes with what George writes is immediately considered non-canon.

Very similar thing happened to me! I bought Mirror's Edge and Dead Space from the local charity shop, and five seconds out of the door remembered they're both EA games and facepalmed. I haven't actually checked, but I'm pretty sure they'll be locked. I'm just hoping Prey, GTA3 and Tron 2.0 make up for it. Doom3 worked but Windows 7 seems to cause sound problems. (My charity shop had an amazing selection of PC games for about a month, nothing since then. I think I may have drained them.)

This is a very specific 'help me' thread, but does anyone here stream Netflix or LoveFilm through their telly in the UK? I really want to pay someone for this sort of service but both seem designed to scare people away.

I've skimmed over this discussion a little, but just for interest's sake: I always defined "gameplay" in my head as the mechanics of the game - what you have to do and how enjoyable that is. It is an admittedly broad term, that I associate with 16bit game reviews that had separate scores for Graphics, Sound and Gameplay. To me, rating the gameplay is rating whether you enjoy playing the game outside of all aesthetic/narrative concerns. But I guess these days people specify a little more rather than use the umbrella term - they'll refer to the mechanics, the platforming elements, the puzzles, the UI or the control scheme. I would probably say gameplay as a shorthand for that area in everyday nerd conversation. I think the problem here is that FrenPon didn't give his definition of the word gameplay within the blog post; if he had, we'd be debating the central argument of his post, not what we all individually think the word means and whether it's helpful or not. Obviously it'd be great if all critical terms had the exact same meaning for everyone, but sometimes the critic needs to specify. I'm trying to think of an example, the best I can come up with right now is "classic" - which I usually take to mean "a work that is honored as definitive in its field" but could easily be discussed using a different definition. As I want to keep this thread OT but don't have anything real to plug, check out this awesome film review comment I did a while back as StinkyLomax, defending a reviewer against some idiot fanboys: http://www.totalfilm.com/reviews/cinema/the-expendables-2-1

And do you have a LoveFILM account?

Apologies, I was a bit drunk when I posted that. With more sober googling, it seems that neither is on Panasonic tellies yet, but I can't get the LF app working on my Blu-Ray player either. I feel like Erkki right now, trying to give people money but not being allowed to. EDIT: OKAY, I have managed to link my Sony account with my LoveFILM account (I reactivated and instead of restarting my trial it just signed me up), so hopefully I can get this going via my BR player now. And hopefully if it all sucks, I can cancel easily (I hear horror stories about them ignoring cancellations etc).

Steam's Halloween Adventure Bundle of a load of games you probably already own! Absolutely no money goes to charity! http://store.steampowered.com/sub/17800/

Only sort-of-for-charity, that one.

No, it does mean it's only sort-of for charity though.

It's only sort-of for charity:

Kev Smith has recorded a commentary 'cast with the screenwriter: http://smodcast.com/episodes/dark-knight-returns-pt-1-commentary-track-with-marc-bernardin/ Tundra, what are your thoughts on Red Dwarf X so far? I've seen ep 1 and thought it was okay but weak.

Actually, I guessed that at the time, TP. It's been shown by that point iirc that . I'm looking forward to finishing all the published books then going back and reading these articles, as long as they're not the type that extrapolate out predictions for the upcoming books. I'm enjoying Storm Of Crows, although it is definitely a change of pace. I like it, though, it makes me feel like more of an active reader again, having to pay attention like I did at the start. Also, there are more than enough familiar characters to keep me going and I'm enjoying the little hints about what the missing characters are up to building my anticipation of getting to see them again. It's always strange to me when hardcore fans of a tv or book series don't seem to have any faith in the creators and stamp their feet as soon as anything unexpected happens.

It's hard to answer without fully understanding your criticism of RD. Do you mean the opening of season 7 was piss-poor because they just brushed away the cliffhanger in a crappy straight-to-camera five second info-dump then moved on? Because if so, I can confirm that Looper is better than that. If you're somehow criticising Out Of Time, then you don't deserve a reason to see Looper. (But really, for me the explanations were just fine although it intentionally gives it a fuzzy logic feel - they don't worry about explicitly delineating hard and fast rules. Don't expect hard sci-fi, don't expect Face/Off, expect a stylish yet uneven indie sci-fi drama.)

I have seen it. It is very good but not without its problems.

Your butt is well-spotted?

Here is a helpful article for you: http://www.wikihow.com/Organize-Your-Video-Games

No email yet, so I don't think Alice or I will be able to make this, which is a shame as no one will get to see us in our dresses.

It totally fails the Bechdel Test: Alien Edition. I reckon Valve will do Episode 3 in a very similar manner to Eps 1 and 2, to wrap up this Combine Occupation section of the story, then have Gordon wake up on some other place/time for HL3 in the new Source engine, developing them concurrently.

CREATIVE KILLJOY!

How's that BTDT remake coming, BigJKO? You should pretty much be finished by now, right?

You going to these, then, Nach? Anyone else?