Ben X

I got around 70-80% through the game and, as per usual, this is the point of the game where I'm starting to feel like a super-agent. I've got a laser-gun so I can finally take down the armoured enemies with relative ease, I can hack bots and turrets to kill enemies and I can fall long distances. I still can't sprint for more than 4 seconds, and if I run out of candy bars all my cloaking and take-down powers are useless, but I'm getting there. And then they pull the classic 'take away all your stuff' move. Suddenly I'm on a very linear level on a ship full of crates with no powers and having to save-scum through the exact stealth and platforming route laid out by the devs, kill by kill. All the weapons and augs I'd spent the whole game gathering and balancing are gone. They give a few aug points back to you and all your weapons but no ammo, so you're forced back to basics. There's a hint that if I get to a LIMB clinic I'll be able to go back to exactly what I had before, so if they do that straight after this level it won't be too bad, but will that be the case and will they give me all my ammo back too? It's an infuriating thing for the devs to do as I approach the end stretch of the game. I found out after a little research that this is in fact the poorly-received DLC that has been inserted into the middle of the Director's Cut. What a bone-headed decision. I probably wouldn't have minded if they'd given me all my stuff back - sure I'd be overpowered for this section, but it might have been a nice break in the game to just rip through a more Half-Life/Modern Warfare level without breaking a sweat. As it is I almost rage-uninstalled. If they don't get me back on track directly after this section, I still might.

Yeah. The game regularly has rooms full of boxes (be they lockers, sleeping pods or whatever) for you to laboriously go through looking for money (which you have to because some quests require you to pay up thousands of creds).

Hmmm, I'll try and be careful of spoilers as you're playing along, kolzig! I won't be talking much story though, so should be fine. I've got to the next city hub now, and have levelled up a bit. Because of my new augs and weaponry, the game is starting to feel more enjoyable - the firefights are more manageable and the cover-system is actually quite cool if you make sure to get yourself in a good position and use health regen and cover a lot. Some of the quests are okay, some are either dull or confusing. For one I'm on at the moment, I'm supposed to use a non-lethal takedown, but I can't actually figure out how to do one of those. Firstly, both my takedown modes are lethal, and secondly the option doesn't pop up when I sneak up behind him [EDIT: ah ha, ok, I think the issue was I didn't have enough battery power left for a takedown after cloaking into his apartment. Also apparently one of the takedowns is non-lethal, I'll have to take another look at that]. For another, it required me to hack a terminal in a place where I was guaranteed to get swarmed by enemies but acted as if I'd be sauntering out of the place. I'm going to finish off the secondary quests I've got open, then I think I'll stick to the story quests for a while. This is a problem I find with RPGs, or RPG elements - the best strategy is to push through all the boring secondary stuff at the start to get yourself powered up enough to enjoy the main game. It even leaks through to games like Psychonauts or Rage. The story is still pretty dull. I'm kind of waiting for a huge revelation to blow my mind, rather than the various strata of corporate espionage I'm working through now. The setting is kind of cool and detailed, but aside from the future-renaissance fashion and black/gold colour scheme it's the usual cyberpunk stuff. I'm getting pretty sick of clubs and brothels and strip-clubs. At least have a male pole-dancer or something if you're going to stick with the Duke Nukem settings! I think I'm enjoying the game overall? It has the classic Deus Ex problem of playing as a cool dude superhuman but never really feeling in control of the situation.

You could do it in Th1ef? I don't think I was ever aware of that. As I remember it, though, you couldn't see where you were on the map, so I always had trouble reconciling the hand-drawn maps with the actual levels and notes probably wouldn't have helped. It's one of those things that would be easy enough IRL but the disconnect of video games renders difficult. Another Deus Ex example is when they say "yeah, this dude lives on X street in the Y complex on the 4th floor", and irl you would be able to follow those instructions using prior world knowledge, shorthand notes, maps, street signs, GPS, asking strangers for directions, etc, but the relative low-fidelity of a game's visuals and world detail plus the level design often being geared towards aethetics over function and clarity makes what is an ostensibly simple task quite daunting. The cyborg trappings make this all the more galling, as putting all the hyperlinks, overlays and such in would absolutely fit with the UI and story. At least in Thief it's justified that you probably would only have a crappy bit of paper with some scrawlings on it (although I'm sure some creative UI design could minimise the dissonance).

I'm in Detroit now and it's opened up into a proper sprawling level now, which is cool. There are still the usual Deus Ex problems (which may be common to RPGs, I dunno), like feeling obliged to do a ton of rather dull secondary missions in order to rank up a bit, and being given tons of clues and information that I can never wrangle into a clear strategy. Honestly, what I'd like is a map with labels on it, possibly labels I can make myself when I find a point of interest, and a list of pertinent info I've found out from conversations, emails etc, ideally with each bit of info having a hyperlink to a map location if it mentions it (or let me create a hyperlink to one of my own POIs so it feels more like I'm putting the pieces together). It may be a little hand-holdy but I'd prefer it to having to scan through dozens of emails every time I want to remind myself of something, or having a pen and paper ready to note down the vague directions NPCs give me. I found a map of secret entrances and stuff in a detective's office that I snuck into, and I really wish Jensen's UI had scanned that and applied it to my overall map because I just could not contextualise it. The story and setting isn't half as interesting as Invisible War so far...

Playing through my FPSes, I wish more designers would 'protect me from myself'. As I mentioned in my thread, all too often the easiest path is to stick to shotgun/machine-gun depending on ammo, pistol if you're desperate. A lot of games give you all these fancy weapons and never encourage their use.

Sadly, normal usage is incorrect, as it is with 'reboot' and a ton of other neologisms. That definition just doesn't make sense, as I outlined above. The example the google definition (which comes from Oxford Dictionaries, apparently) gives - "we're given a retcon for Wilf's absence from Donna's wedding in ‘The Runaway Bride’: he had Spanish Flu" - illustrates why! As I said, if you use this definition, every piece of relayed information of a narrative is a ret-con.

I don't know who this Dan guy is, but I agree with him!

'Ret-con' is getting misused in the Blade Runner thread! Revealing something undisclosed in previous films is not a ret-con. The reveal at the end of Empire Strikes Back is not a ret-con. If that were the case, every piece of relayed information within a single film would be a ret-con! A ret-con is when the audience is asked to ignore a previously established fact, with no in-universe justification. So in Red Dwarf, where previously it was stated that Lister and Kochanski only spoke 15 words to each other in their lives, but in season 7 the writers bring her on as a regular character and decide that actually they had a full romantic relationship, that's a ret-con.

I gave Zeno Clash a little longer but have now quit. Great art design but rubbish everything else. Forum thread Contemporary review (as with a lot of these games, reviewers tend to forgive a lot for an interesting and well-realised setting) A piece on the art design/tech by the Dead End Thrills guy post-mortem Next: Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Director's Cut) I've played a little of this, and it's generally cool. It's got a Robocop vibe with a smattering of Blade Runner (and apparently there are some fairly overt references to the former in the game). It certainly has a lot of Deus Ex trappings: sombre cutscenes and growly monotonous voice-acting; nice art design that is let down a little by certain tech issues; the option of stealth or shooting, without either being top-notch mechanically; secondary objectives but a sense of missing out on them due to crappy maps and notes (this time there is a full, auto-updating level map - hooray! - but it doesn't help you with secondary objectives and it controls really badly). There's a cover-system now, but it's too underpowered to be very useful for stealth or shooting. I'm only on the first level, which feels relatively linear, so I expect the game will open up a bit soon and also let me start augmenting to help the gameplay along.

+1 Another good way to troll Google Maps would be to set up scale models in the right place, so it looks like there's a massive gothic castle in the distance of your suburban street shot, or whatever.

"If only those brains could tell of what happened there," thought the grandson of one of the brains, as he added the finishing touches to his latest online-toaster design. #tragictimeloops

Yeah, pretty bad trailer. I think most trailers are bad, but they probably always have been. Example of another problem with trailers: before the Mother! screening I saw at least three trailers that made me think "cool-looking film, but I feel like I've seen all of it now so not going to bother with it".

Another genre switch-up for the X-Men franchise: a teen horror type thing set around the Apocalypse point of the timeline:

Did you not think Deadpool felt fresh amongst all the other Marvel movies (ie MCU and non-MCU)? If Star Wars were attempting that breadth of tone across its movies it would probably go a long way to solving the fatigue people are feeling - as it is, they're getting rid of directors like Lord/Miller who try to do something like that. EDIT: I don't want to take this thread off-topic - we can always start a Marvel movies thread as we've only got the telly one - but it strikes me that with Deadpool alongside First Class, Days Of Future Past and Logan, Fox is the studio doing the most interesting stuff with their mega-franchise.

I was just going to ask if people think the MCU has the same issue.

Clyde Bruckman is indeed fantastic. To update some other stuff from this thread: I got The Wire on DVD in all its 4:3 glory; Steven Williams was also great in The Leftovers; The X-Files season 11 will likely air early next year, and will a lot less likely make up for the godawful season 10 by being brilliant whilst wrapping up the mythology arc in a wholly satisfying way.

I saw this yesterday and found it a similar beast to The Force Awakens in many ways: - It's a good film, very well-made, I enjoyed it - It often manages to capture the tactile, lived-in feel of the original, but misses it on occasion (here, the clean, minimalist sets throughout and some CG cityscapes) - it successfully replicates (lol) the overall tone of the original, but hits too many of the same beats, overstuffs the narrative (a lot of loose threads and 47 mins longer than the original) and crams in some pointless cameos - Ford is great in it and makes this recognisably old Deckard as opposed to old Han or old Indy Having said all that, it took a couple of viewings for me to appreciate the original, so I may need the same with this one, perhaps moreso as it might help view it as its own thing a little more. It's a shame it's not doing well at the box office. I guess not enough young people know the original well enough for the good reviews and word of mouth to pull them in?

This was my main issue with it. I might still watch S2 though, as it was well made and pretty enjoyable.

Tilly is basically Reg Barclay, but if he hung around Riker in every episode.

Yep, loving the art style, really looking forward to seeing a ton of different minds in it. Something else that struck me watching this is how well Double Fine have done at making themselves feel accessible and likeable as a studio, thanks to their open and exhaustive documentaries et al. As I watched I was thinking stuff like "Zak looks weird clean-shaven ... good to see Anna back and healthy ... there's Lee looking super-serious as usual." I don't think I have ever had that level of familiarity and affection for a dev company, outside of Campo Santo due to the Thumbs podcast. Sensible Software in the early 90s is the only example I can think of that comes anywhere near. I guess some might say id in the Doom era approached it...

Sounds good! Just don't go so slow that you never end up doing anything just because it's safer than making something rubbish

I find Alison Hammond very annoying but that was pretty fun. I don't think they needed to save any booze for Harrison, pretty sure he was baked already.

Bear in mind that students going to university IRL get given mountains of reading and don't always get through all of it! I think you might need to give yourself permission to skim some of the reading and come back to it later. Also, it's great that you're shooting more stuff on your own. Maybe try some narrative stuff too, use the things in your lessons as inspiration. If you don't know what script to write, maybe adapt a short story or ask someone here to write you something (again, bearing in mind what access you have to locations, actors, lighting etc). It might be helpful to see if there are any groups near you who meet up and make films together (a site like meetup.com might help), you may learn some cinematography stuff (as well as working within a crew, other disciplines) that way before embarking on another course...

No I haven't. Taking a look, I guess Rock Of Ages is the other well-known one? Seems like you're right - it also has lovely design but I seem to remember as a game it received a fair amount of criticism...