Ben X

Can you tell us (with spoiler tags if necessary!) why?

Sorry for the pimp-bump, but The Swindle is currently 60% off on the Switch (edit: this may not be in the US), which I believe is quite a rare, high discount: https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/The-Swindle-1442222.html It's also 80% off on Steam right now, which puts it down to a bonkers £2.39 (around three bucks): https://store.steampowered.com/app/369110/The_Swindle/

There's a list of twitch times for the runs here: https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/c3tjzg/sgdq_vod_thread_2019/ I guess they'll all be put up on YouTube by the official channel at some point. I watched 4 and got a mixed bag: Split/Second and Last Action Hero were obnoxious, Quake seemed to this layperson like 17 minutes of someone missing strats, and the Super Mario World blind relay race was incredibly impressive and nail-bitingly tense.

For discussion of the first two Toy Story films, check out our Pixar re-watch thread! (We didn't make it to Toy Story 3 because a general reluctance to watch Cars killed the whole endeavour.)

Well, I just got a different Hobbs & Shaw theatrical trailer made up of completely different scenes, so I guess the lesson here is to avoid either all internet trailers or all theatrical trailers!

The model definitely looks better immediately, and the compositing is impressive. Shame they didn't properly animate the face, though - it feels very rigid. I just listened to the second episode - all great stuff! Regarding spoilers in general, just a quick note as someone who is rather spoiler-averse - it's a common argument that if a whole film can be ruined by a spoiler then the film can't be that good. But this is, I think, a strawman. The Averse don't think a spoiler will ruin the entire film, just the moment it refers to. That still sucks - I want that moment to be conveyed to me by the film, not someone on Facebook. Even films with bigger twists that flip your understanding of the entire thing - Planet Of The Apes, Fight Club, Sixth Sense - aren't wholly ruined if that twist is spoiled, but they're designed to be watched without that knowledge. It's inconsiderate to take that experience away from people. I knew the POTA twist and loved the film anyway, but I also loved watching those other two movies not knowing the twist (or even that there was one). I'd rather have the filmmakers decide what I should know going in, not people on social media or in my office (or indeed the people in charge of which trailer edit to put out!). Regarding trailers specifically, I find the 'you showed the entire movie!' issue more prevalent than the 'you spoiled this twist or plot development!' one. It's interesting to hear that it comes from focus groups - I can't help but think that they may not be formatted in a helpful way. If you asked me after I saw the Hobbs & Shaw trailer "does that movie look fun"? I'd say yes. If you asked me "does that trailer make you want to watch that movie?" I'd say no, because I feel like it showed every single cool moment from the film - I doubt there's much left there to surprise me. I often close my eyes partway through a trailer because it's sold me on the movie 30-60 seconds in and I don't want to see any more stuff. It's probably impractical, but if the focus groups could get that granular perhaps it would lead to different decisions. The multiple trailer versions thing is definitely an issue too. I try to avoid subsequent trailers if one version has sold me on a movie already. In the case of Detective Pikachu, the one I saw on the internet was perfect - gave me a tiny amount of story set-up, some humour and atmosphere. Unfortunately, I then went to the cinema and saw a second trailer for it which gave me loads more story, more locations, creatures etc. It even gave me a different version of the mime scene, so I likely had that entire scene composited in my head by that point. It made me feel less enthusiastic about seeing it at the cinema, and more likely to wait for it to arrive on a streaming service.

On the topic of game trailers and experimentation, here's a blog post from Dan about why he decided to go for an all-gameplay announcement trailer on our upcoming game. And here's a recent video (which quotes Derek) on how to make indie game trailers:

Yeah, this final season especially really suffered from the sudden rush the series found itself in. This is a popular image that's been going around, and I agree except for the fact that it's too generous to season 5:

This is a great idea for a 'cast, I look forward to working my way through these! Hopefully I can steal some talking points for when I'm whinging online about the latest show-everything trailer, too. That Ultraviolet trailer is great, in a kind of music video way - I'm not sure I could handle a whole movie at that visual intensity..! The things I thought brought it down a bit were the introduction of Voiceover Guy partway through and that thudding conversation with the British guy.

Ah, that does, thank you! I knew that there would be some rather big differences, but I kind of assumed he'd given them his definite set-in-stone endpoint. Would be great if it were completely different (though not just for the sake of it). And in his latest blog he gives the New Zealand tourism board permission to imprison him in a small cabin until he's finished AWOW if he doesn't have it published in time for his Summer 2020 visit there, so I choose to believe he will definitely have it done by then! Then, what, another 5 years for ADOS?

Aw, thanks Hopefully at some point in the future either you'll get a PC or it will come out on other platforms! Additional news: episode 2 of our awful 'cast is now up, same link as before!

The Veep series finale was phenomenal. Miles better than Game Of Thrones, too (definitely regretting my decision to move back to the show instead of waiting for the books now).

Oh damn, sorry, I meant to mention that we had previously decided it made sense to keep that thread to Netflix only, but obviously my attention wandered! Makes sense to keep it in here, I reckon, rather than start a bunch of tiny non-Netflix Marvel tv show threads...

Not tempted by the upcoming Batwoman?

I know we weren't going to discuss Gotham in here, but as the series finished a month ago and there's no point in starting a new thread: The series has always been half ace half awful, but this final season was mostly awful. They picked some boring Big Bads and went with the most boring versions of pretty much all their regular characters. A real shame, as at their height they were doing some great stuff with Riddler, Penguin, 'Joker' and even young Bruce Wayne, plus occasional villains like Prof Pyg and Hugo Strange were done well. How's the Arrowverse/Berlantiverse these days, @SecretAsianMan (and anyone else watching it)?

No, we have the Netflix Marvel thread, but any AoS talk is scattered through the Movies/TV Recs megathread.

Same day.

This is the new Half-Life 3 thread.

Excellent news!

That's awful, hope you and your family get through it okay <3

Does anyone (probably @Thyroid) have any recommendations for something like this? After weeks at work of desperately trying to avoid spoilers, I've given in and caught up on the show (I stopped at season 5 previously). It's a shame, but there's no way I'll go another ten years, or however long it takes GRRM to get WoW and DoS out, without accidentally learning every plot beat and moment anyway. Once it ends, I'm going to do a re-read, including the Hedge Knight stories, and then my first read of the released WoW excerpts and Fire And Blood.

There's been some talk about this series in the "Books, books, books..." thread already, but I think they deserve their own thread. I don't read much hard fantasy, so I was worried when I started on these that they'd be a real slog. I was surprised to find them to be an easy, entertaining read, that I'm quickly getting addicted to in that "stay up all night/miss your bus stop to keep reading" kind of way. It's very fast-paced and has a satisfying pattern of set-up then pay-off. Book 2 slowed right down for the first quarter, though. I suppose I need to expect the books to build to a climax then defuse at the start of the next one in order to start building again. I'd be interested to hear others' opinions. I'm halfway through Clash Of Kings (book 2), and haven't watched the tv series, so be careful with your spoilers, please! One specific thing I'm wondering about is the chapter in Game Of Thrones (book 1) where I assume I'm just wondering if I'm supposed to have already gleaned anything more from that, and if it's still an open thread (I'm assuming it will become more relevant as ).

Hey folks, I tidied the original post up a bit and put in some begging for you all to wishlist it on Steam. To make up for the bump, here's a podcast Dan and I recorded and a blog post from Dan about why indie game trailers are shit.

Thanks! I'm really happy with it