Ben X

Nope. John Walker says "if you want the experience as I had it – going in completely blind, knowing nothing other than it was a scripted adventure using the techniques of survival games – then take my word for it that it’s a top-notch experience with a slightly damp ending". https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/03/24/kona-review/

Oh, ha ha, I thought you meant Dishonored! Nah, I wouldn't bother with the sequel to Homefront unless it got extremely good reviews (and went down to silly prices). It's a relatively good follow-em-up, but nothing special. (Oh, and to be pedantic, this one was set in future America with all the build-up starting in 2011.) "Press E to jump in mass grave" pretty much sums this game up. Some attempts at 'war is hell' but a lot more 'war is hella exciting!' gamey stuff. They at least put a Korean-American on your team (though he is the tech nerd) and have you stand off against some nutso survivalists. But then they do give the female member tight jeans and a top with the sleeves rolled up and the midriff burnt off, and all the "oh the humanity!" dialogue. It lacks polish, too - lots of wonky AI, glitching and uncanny valley moments. That said, the shooting's fine if basic and there are lots of exciting things happening throughout. I almost quit at the incredibly frustrating helicopter level, though. Worse than the tank level in Crysis. If FPSes really want to give you a vehicle section, they should make damn sure it handles well and is a fun respite rather than a fiddly and overly-demanding challenge. Onto Bioshock Infinite! I've played the first ten or so minutes of this to test some hardware, and I remember the production values being hugely impressive. I think it's mostly fallen out of favour as a game and a philosophical discussion, but hopefully I'll find stuff to enjoy.

Ha, I am tempted to try the DLCs and sequel, as this game was really close to letting me enjoy it and I hear they improve on it, but unless they go down to silly prices I can't justify it with such a massive backlog.

Okay, that got it working. Looks pretty nice, if rather blandly realistic, especially after Dishonored. It has a COD:MW feel to it, and much like that game it's a mix of cheesy - big pyrotechnics, fighting North Korean forces in the US through suburban back-gardens littered with passenger jet debris and past White Castles, the idyllic all-American rebel hideout with kids on swings and delicious home-cooking - and some pretty affecting stuff like a convincing lead-in to the North Korean invasion (especially unnerving these days), a toddler watching his parents getting executed and a firefight with a Korean mother and baby cowering the corner and both screaming. As with Modern Warfare though, the cheesiness is winning out so far. There's no difficulty setting and it's auto-save only. The shooting is a little wooly but pretty forgiving to make up for it, especially with health regen. I'll likely barrel through this until it gets irritating or boring (though at around 5 hours it may not get the chance).

Done. Quite disappointed overall, for all the reasons I've gone into. Lovely art design, although even that started to get a bit dull by the end, but the story and gameplay just didn't click for me. Watching the credits, though: wow, that voice cast. Susan Sarandon, Lena Headey, Carrie Fisher, John Slattery, Brad Dourif, Michael Madsen and Chloë Grace Moretz! Forum thread Making of A video by that one guy (contains spoilers for the whole franchise, I think): Alrighty, onto Homefront. EDIT: ugh, there's some problem where it says it needs to instal PhysX but then doesn't do it. I'm going to try updating my Nvidia drivers, though I suspect that won't help. (It may even hurt, depending on whether this is one of the more unstable updates) I really don't want to have to start uninstalling and reinstalling various components of my graphics setup, especially if I've got to install the 2011 version of it then remember to update it afterwards and all that. EDIT2: jesus, Nvidia update failed. Tried 'GeForce Experience' and that's installed a shitty front-end thing that I need to register with to use. And Nvidia's site itself is impenetrable.

Well yeah, I figured it was all production-designed to within an inch of its life, that's why I found it amusing!

Well, I finally got back to Dishonored today (aka "Dishonored tomorrow"). And I'm still a little bored by it. I took out the Regent, got back and was (utterly unsurprisingly) double-crossed by the dudes at the pub. Then it was the old 'recover your gear' level plus a ton of zombies and spitting plants in a sewer level. There's still some stuff that is consistently fun, like pulling off some nice swordplay or blinking around the place, but I'm not finding the story or characters particularly interesting (although I do like Emily and Samuel, so I am at least invested in rescuing the former and sad that the latter is disappointed in me just because I essentially helped invent the atomic bomb), and when I see a level swarming with enemies, I don't get that buzz of anticipation I got from the Crytek games for example, because I'm just not enjoying the combat or stealth that much, it's all too fiddly. I'm on the last level now, it's a dreary dark rocky bit. I think I might try to finish this evening, then I think I'll blast through Homefront on Easy for a bit of simple shooting before I get into Bioshock Infinite.

I like how that room in the Gorn trailer is full of hip nerd stuff. Persepolis, Maus and Watchmen! Black Cobra poster! Famicom console! Cacodemon plushy! Adventure Time skateboards!

RPS post! https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/01/10/the-world-begins-with-you/

Bennett Foddy's "Getting Over It" is my favorite game trailer of 2017. But also, I love that Syndicate one. I think that was my intro to dubstep, certainly to Skrillex. It's an amazing cover of the little music loop from the original game, and the trailer is edited so well to it.

ah yes, the joke here

Fucking misogynists making it difficult for me to publicly dislike shit films >:(

The trailer for The Meyerowitz Stories didn't look great, despite it being Baumbach and having a good cast. As it's on two of your lists, I've watchlisted it. (Need a better verb for that.)

Except it was called Revenge Of The Jedi and Harrison Ford decided not to come back so Han Solo stayed frozen in carbonite.

To further pedantricise the pedant, they claimed that saying humans are the only sapient species in the universe is tautological because the word sapient comes from the term homo sapiens. This is incorrect; they both come from the same root, one does not come directly from the other.

Wait, what was this iron joke? edit: n/m, I managed to find a description. I don't remember if I realised I definitely found the thing rather incongruous, though.

I can do this all day.

Watchlisted. I went for the subtitled version though, because I never seem to enjoy dubbed anime.

After this and our identical opinions on the Indiana Jones movies, I was very disappointed to find out you liked Last Jedi.

Thank fuck, someone else who didn't like Beyond. I cannot believe how many people think that movie is great. Pretty much agreed on you on the other two, though it sounds like I liked them a bit more than you. MI3 was the JJ Abrams one that settled the style of the franchise going forward after the auteur-y DePalma and Woo entries. It had Philip Seymour Hoffman as the baddy and Michelle Monaghan as Ethan's new wife. It was good!

I watched the LoG specials. They're okay taken as a 'whatever happened to?' rather than a proper series. I'll be ignoring them in my head-canon. There's some funny stuff, but it's too rushed and it repeats a lot of stuff, brings back a lot of characters that don't need to be and doesn't move them on, then does some weirdly abrupt things with others. I enjoyed and the stuff got off to an interesting start but then just fizzled out in a really weird way - why then just finish there? I really didn't need any more without them doing something really different with them.

Which probably means Santa Claus is a terrible thoughtless kind of evil.

I may actually be thinking of Force Awakens, but I definitely found it distracting in at least one of the two ST films. Didn't notice anything on Ford or Hamill, though. They were allowed to be craggy as fuck.

Ahhh, is that what that was? Gross. I was confused because it looked like Fisher had got some bad facelifts, but I was under the impression she didn't go in for all that. I finally concluded that it was because they'd put too much colour in her hair so it didn't match her face. If they did digitally smooth her out, I think I find that more offensive than putting a CG or recontextualised Fisher in a few shots to fill any story-holes left by her death.

Looks great! I suspect people may have voted differently on the outfit if they'd known what the surroundings were going to be (I would probably have gone for H). The current look makes the character feel rather out of place - hopefully this fits with the fiction and/or is what you were going for!