Ben X

Nah, I had a very similar reaction the first time I watched it - it's quite jarring seeing such a simplistic take on it. But the second time I watched it I was able to enjoy it more for the good stuff and the way it reflects its main character's miniscule attention span. If nothing else the music written for the film by Beck and others is great, and that opening is amazing.

Regarding Wright not understanding certain stuff, I think volume 6 hadn't been written at the point they were doing the screenplay so that may explain some stuff getting flubbed.

Nice! Synnah, that game looks sweet. Defendy Rocket was great, so hopefully I'll be able to play RABBIT on Android at some point.

Like I said, this was my point here. I've said it elsewhere like twice ever. There was something of the "long-term satirical project" in there, I guess, or pushing against the growing tendency here for people to call for threads to be locked or make a single post on a thread purely to say that they don't like the thread. Perhaps I was just being "an immature baby". But no, I didn't post it because I was mad or upset or holding a grudge. Anyway, I accidentally derailed the thread even more than a potential spurt of gg-related posts would do, so if anyone would like to continue this conversation in another thread (Random Thoughts?) I'd be happy to.

I'm really tired of people in general posting it. My point is, why have the gamergate thread "rightly" closed, just to start posting the same stuff here?

Mode 7 tweeted it as a cross between Syndicate and GTA 1. It strikes me as: Monument Valley With Guns

This thread has become unhealthy, please close it.

I also was not a fan of John Wick: https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/4038-movietv-recommendations/?view=findpost&p=385634 Hardcore Henry got mentioned on the podcast, and I think we've linked to clips of it here before. I remember Sharlto Copley doing a perfect rendition of clunky AI pathfinding and that totally sold me on it!

Uh oh, I'm doing that thing where as I get further and further it becomes more of a chore to start again and replay on easy but the game keeps getting tougher! It's still fun and there's loads of cool set-pieces, secrets and alternative routes to take, but it does feel a little fiddly at times - stealth and platform bits add variety but are pretty clunky and frustrating.

Okay, with a lot of jiggerpokery, i got it working. I've just played the first level. So far, it's very Duke Nukem 3D in tone, with a quippy meat-head lead in a modern city setting, with lots of stuff to play about with and loads of pictures of topless women around (in a bank!). It's the Quake 2 engine, I think, so the enemies do lots of fun theatrical stuff, but the weapons feel a little more immediate although the enemies take a lot of hits. It's pretty damn hard already, I'm tempted to start again and knock it down to easy. The developers obviously have cinematic aspirations and you can tell it's 1998 because the main tonal influences so far are Se7en and Heat. There's a nice intro where the camera follows a couple of pigeons following Blade's chopper all the way from the army base to the bank, only to get fragged by one of the robbers. Then it gives you a very short on rails bit as the first thing you do, before dropping you into FPS mode. So it has a cool, fast-paced feel already. Another cool thing is that after SHOGO this is the second game in a row to have a non-Caucasian lead. EDIT: Loading times are fine, only a second or two. Also, I'm trying to remember if this is the first FPS so far to have an assistant giving you audio updates and commentary. SHOGO has people talking to you but this feels more like the start of a trope (I'm especially thinking of Far Cry 1).

Okay, I just played another few hours of SHOGO and am now giving up. It's full of charm and fun - the anime pastiche, the explosive mech levels - but it's also very rough. Although I enjoyed the long-range combat and the 'gain health back from making a critical shot' mechanic (though I never figured out what actually constitutes a critical shot), there are barely any tactics involved and enemies are extremely easy to kill unless they're placed in an unfair ambush position and get a one-hit kill, which happens a lot. Plus more time is spent on the unskippable and brain-meltingly dull cutscenes than actual gameplay! I don't have enough of a sense that there's much more new stuff for me to see in this game to continue playing. I'm glad I played it, but I wouldn't recommend it wholeheartedly without a patch that allows you to skip cutscenes and then blasting through on easy. Thanks again to eot for donating a copy to this playthrough! Now onto SiN, assuming I can get it working from disc (which I really hope I can as I've been looking forward to this one).

So are you on the Zootopia marketing team or what?

Bwah ha ha! Following in Toy Story 2's footsteps, Cars comes to a dead halt about halfway through for a incongruous song about how sad it is that the car town isn't visited by other cars anymore. EDIT: Okay, finished. Maaan what a slog. Two hours of lazy cliches. And that final race where they have to do about 200 laps in a circle has less drama than Phantom Menace's pod-race.

Yeah, the film lengths steadily creep up from Toy Story onwards. Cars is 1h57m

Ha ha, no. What strikes me immediately is how Pixar have extremely limited themselves with character animation with the vehicles thing. Also, it lends itself to some pretty dull environments and action. The way they separate Lightning from Mac the truck is painfully contrived - 'there are naughty cars who like to make other cars fall to sleep on the road but there is also one of them who sneezes a lot, so Mac falls asleep and then wakes up again at the precise moments that cause him not to realise he's dumped Lightning out the back'. EDIT: woof, an hour in and I am very bored. This is so slow and rote!

Well, it's a couple days early, but I may as well do it while I'm ill anyway: I'M ABOUT TO WATCH CARS

Yeah, we should lock this thread.

You're telling us...

Now you have to watch The Incredibles before Monday!

The cameo: Strangely, they seem to have changed the graphic for that since someone on the DF forums noticed it from pre-release footage

Goddammit, someone just bumped the DF forum thread about that fan art AGAIN, saying how they doubt the remaster will even manage to look that good. DON'T LISTEN TO THEM, DOUBLE FINE!

And that's specifically a reference to the Grim Remastered Edition where they accidentally spelt the new texture GOLO. You may notice that one of the previously indistinct portraits upstairs in the past has been turned into another cameo...

Cyberpunk gamejam: http://www.punkcyb.org/

I finally watched Welcome To The Dollhouse and it's really funny but also a real gut-punch. Meanwhile, I watched the Paul Feig comedy Spy and it's pretty bad. I'm surprised it got such a favourable reaction. My tweets on it: Later:

Okay, double-post then! Watched it again, stiiiill love it. Immediately, the introduction of Brad Bird and Michael Giacchino into the mix feels like a revitalisation for Pixar - to me, this movie has a notably more sophisticated, adult feel. The story starts off pretty slowly but soon snaps into gear and is very well constructed. Visually it looks great. They also do a really clever thing where in the opening sequence set years earlier, the textures are a lot simpler. Works on a metaphorical level but also uses Pixar's technological history to emphasise time settings. It's also good to see some exaggerated human character design - Mr Incredible, his boss, the teacher etc. Some aren't as interesting, notably the two female adult characters - they fall into that female face design template that has been brought up elsewhere on these forums, which a lot of 3D animated films default to. And it's a shame that a lot of the incidental non-super characters all have bland, un-designed faces. It works for the henchmen but not so much for cops, office workers etc. I'd read it as a stylistic choice to set the heroes apart if it weren't for contradictions such as the boss, teacher etc. It's a particular letdown in comparison to The Iron Giant, where every background character has really interesting, individual design. Couldn't they have let the interns loose on this? Also, there's not a lot of skin texture going on, so all the characters look the same age despite some crow's feet or extra weight - it kind of works with this film but it has become the standard look for human characters in every 3D film which was a shame (I think this is why Rango got a lot of attention despite not being the best film - it dared put some dirty, complex textures on its characters). But generally, the cinematography and direction are fantastic. There's almost an Inverse Star Trek Rule pattern happening here for me: Toy Story A Bug's Life Monsters Inc. Toy Story 2 Finding Nemo The Incredibles However, I think I'm going to be pretty down on the rest of the films from here, so maybe it's a Fibonacci sequence or something!