Ben X

I'm hoping that the Thumbs will start to introduce more "I've been watching/reading/playing/doing" discussions as they go, as I agree that a mix of thoughtful crit and tangents a little closer to IT would be nice. I enjoyed the unpaid endorsements for that reason. (Witness has been on my watchlist for ages, really must get to it!)

An extra tidbit about Bruce the shark from Jaws: it was named after Spielberg's lawyer. Really enjoying the show! I was going to mention my hope that you lay off the robot fear for a bit, but it seems to have died down in the subsequent episodes anyway. The explanation for the 'cast title is cool, although I'm not sure about the tagline - what is it, "the cast where everything is important unless it's not"? Feels a bit cheesy and empty to me, like something Drew Carey might say...

So this is a pretty typical Monolith game. Endless fiddling with menus, stupidly harsh health mechanics and combat (I should not be struggling with the first enemy in the game), and stealth that simply does not work. The setting is well rendered (fucking hell, the game's got me doing shitty programming puns now) but TRON actually isn't a great licence for a video game - the environments get samey very quickly and as with the film the amount of emotionless line deliveries are pretty wearing too, like paying a game mostly populated by Mr Freeze clones. I've managed to save myself into a corner already, so I may actually quit this game very early on. I'll probably give an earlier save one more shot, but I'm in a section where they've taken away my ranged weapon (the disc) so I'm even more vulnerable than usual, and the place is swarming with enemies who have super-accurate ranged weapons. It's fucking stupid. I'm actually talking myself out of giving it another go, here.

I haven't finished listening yet, but had to drop in with a couple of film corrections: Paul W.S. ("What Script?") Anderson didn't direct the Streetfighter movie, he did the Mortal Kombat one. Tutti Frutti ("wam bam a bloo blops") does not play in the helicopter in Predator. A different Little Richard song, Long Tall Sally, is played. Bill Duke's character starts chanting it to himself later on when he goes crazy: "Gonna have me some fun tonight, gonna have me some fun tonight..."

Has anyone seen Logan yet?

Also includes The Swindle for only £3, the best cybersteampunk stealth platformer from the year before Xcom 2 came out.

Sounds like the horse name character allowance is long enough to have "Shadowfax"!

Fair enough! So what does anyone here like about this game? So far there's 'enemies can bounce bombs off shields'...

So we know why Vulpes dislikes this game, but why do others here like it?

Good episode! Someone pointed out to me once that Nelly Dean is the villain of the book. I can't remember the specifics now, but apart from being a judgmental arsehole, she also willingly cultivates some misunderstandings and resentments a couple of times. She's kind of a Iago figure at times. Don't know how anyone who's read it recently feels about this..?

Put it on easy, skip as much of the story as you can manage, blast through and enjoy the environments. It does well at conveying the feeling of intruding into alien ecosystems and sometimes pissing them off. I've started on the tutorial of TRON. Seems nicely presented so far, all the little polygonal shapes buzzing around and flashing at you. Seems like there's a lot of hacker rpg lite stuff where you have to fix corrupt files and transfer energy to stuff (on top of the "find the yellow key" = "get the file permission" stuff). Could be interesting and fun, could be annoying and fiddly - same for the disc combat. My heart did sink when I saw mention of having to move quietly to avoid being spotted by enemies. If the stealth's as shitty as in Monolith's NOLF games, I may not be playing for too long...

Woah, I just watched that Spielberg Oner yesterday! And it's not like we were both led to it by a forum discussion either - I was looking at Tor Books, which took me to tor.com which took me to a video about Roger Rabbit, the comments of which took me to Every Frame A Painting. Spooky.

Oh yeah, that also (the rest I can understand even though I think CE3K is great).

When you specify "Duel (TV movie)" do you mean you prefer the original 74-minute tv movie cut to the 90 minute theatrical one?

Well, I'm not sure why you like the last level so much, @Cordeos, I found it very irritating! A boss with a one-hit-kill weapon in a small room full of troughs to get caught in, then a very frustrating anti-grav platforming section, a new black-hole weapon thing that you use twice, a bit where the ship starts to rotate like in Jedi Knight for about a minute but it doesn't make any difference, then you get to an escape pod. The end. As with the first game (and Quake 2 and Flashback etc) it has the old Alien 'hero drifts off into space' ending, with some Alien3 morosity thrown in, as you listen to your crew's final message to you recorded before they sacrificed themselves. It's more interesting than 'space marines save the day' ending, I guess, but the whole thing feels rather deflated. Along with the initially wonderful spaceship hub which, much like Telltale's Sam And Max office, gave very little reward for return visits, the plot winds up as nothing more than a pointless diversion from the actual game. Funnily enough, Jean Paul Le Breton gets a thanks in the credits for use of his images. I couldn't find out what they were, but I did find this video of JP playing through Unreal 1 with a tourism (ie combat-removing) mod: https://youtu.be/hsQWcXxOlyg A couple of contemporary reviews (one by Erik Wolpaw) pretty much share my opinions: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/r_unreal2_pc http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/unreal-ii-the-awakening-review/1900-2910117/ Here's an interesting, short retrospective from one of the designers, Matthias Worch, that discusses creative missteps and how innovations like static meshes affected the level designer's role: http://www.worch.com/portfolio/unreal-2/ So, final verdict: solid, enjoyable shooter with gorgeous, atmospheric environments but not much else that stands out. Next: TRON 2.0. I get the feeling this will look cool but be a bit fiddly to play...

I'm still really enjoying this. The loading times are long enough that I've had to put it on easy, but that's not really hampering my enjoyment. It's almost half walking simulator anyway - the settings are gorgeous and the sense of scale is really well done. They are so clever at using layers of distance to create awe-inspiring backdrops. I'm now curious whether there are any texture mods out there that manage to make it look even nicer. The acting and story is generally appalling, although the lead guy wakes up when he's having comedic interactions during the levels - pleading with a mute alien to let him through a door, or shouting meat-headed retorts at a snarky scientist. The siege sequences were pretty cool - it was definitely satisfying to plonk laser posts in position and watch the fence zap to life. But I never felt like I was having that much impact once they started - they tended to be a bit too spread out. I think they're the first ones I've seen so far, though. Seems I'm on the penultimate level now, which is good to know - much more and the game might outstay its welcome, as beyond the atmospherics and extravagant weapons (which, as is the case so often, the game doesn't encourage the use of), it's a pretty basic shooter. A favourite moment so far was when I killed a space marine and he fell back into the doorway but his bulky amour stopped him from falling through so he just leaned there:

Here's a nice vid about JP's use of CGI:

Nein.

I think I would find this mildly irritating - it would break the flow of the 'cast (which one could see as a cynical argument for it, as it would encourage people to support the Patreon for the ad-free version). I'm also mildly disappointed that Jake doesn't include T2 in the list of bad Terminator sequels. It's mostly great right up to the point after the mental hospital escape where the T1000 loses his grip on their car and tumbles along the road. After that it gets very flabby and sappy. I haven't read the recent Flintstones comic run, but I get the impression that "dark and gritty" is not an accurate characterisation. It seems 'satirical' or 'politicised' might be closer - apparently the latter overtly tackles gender inequality, capitalism, art criticism and PTSD amongst other things, whilst the act by the same writer in his upcoming Snagglepuss series of making the eponymous character overtly gay and in struggles with the HUAC seems to go beyond grimdarkification. I know the Thumbs were also talking about the recent trend of simple properties being reimagined through a prism of ponderous modern significance too, though, which seems to fit. Anyway, loved the first episode and am looking forward to catching up with the next few! One thing I'd like to hear more of going forward is music and general audio foolery from Chris. It's always great to hear a new theme tune, song, or playful audio edit.

I haven't listened to this yet, but if "Le Retour De Mario Guerre" doesn't get used I'll be fuming.

Ich bin eine Truthhändler.

Funnily enough, Cracked just posted an article about the Billy Jack films today: http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-most-underratedly-insane-film-franchise-ever-made/

This similarity of SITTM to Psychonauts got brought up in at least one review. Tim Schafer responded on the DF forums saying: But yeah, the character design and some other stuff does feel very reminiscent too..!

Jake suggested Riendeaument (Riendeau moment) for the additional Danielle-based section at the end. He could also have had Riendum (Riendeau addendum) or Riendix (Riendeau appendix). Excellent episode, a great way for the 'cast to sign off before once more going into hibernation!

What the hell, when did sadface emoticon stop turning into an angry tomato emoji and start turning into a sadface emoji?! What next, b ) not turning into sunglasses face? ********* not getting censored?