Ben X

I'm now playing Wolfenstein 3D on baby difficulty, and it's definitely a good idea because the movement and aiming in this game make it pretty easy to lose a load of health to one enemy. Default is turning, not strafing, which is a pain in the tits, and your aim has to be pretty accurate to get a hit for a game with no mouse look. Also, there's no map or quicksave which I really miss, especially as it's so easy to get lost when the levels have very few wall textures and are essentially many many small rooms all linked together. Perhaps it's that I don't have a great sense of direction, but I very nearly had to start drawing a map at one point. Did anyone else used to do that playing this game? On the positive side, it's already pretty atmospheric - the animations and sounds do a lot with very little, and it's cool tromping round a Nazi castle finding hidden artefacts and passageways. And when you get better with the handling and shooting, it's still quite satisfying to run round blasting. They even have cool little moments like a guard positioned facing away from you so you can sneak up and shoot him in the back, or an enemy seeing you, running away then waiting round the corner for you. I don't know how long I'll play this for because it's all very samey. I might skip ahead an episode to see what new stuff is in there.

I don't know the other two, but I recommend a KFC bucket with two sides of gravy. Mmmm-mmm.

Sweet. Oh, I guess if anyone really wants me to play a particular game, they can gift it to me!

Wolfenstein 3D I actually started playing this for about half an hour a few weeks ago. My first impression: fucking difficult! So I'll start again on baby mode and see how I do.

Yeah, it's backlog and PC only. Maybe when I get to the end I won't hate FPSes and will ask for recommendations! If people want to discuss other FPSes in here, that's great, but I think it will only work if it fits loosely within my chronological order (so around when I'm playing SiN would be a good time to bring up Shogo, for instance). For Serious Sams it's the HD versions, unfortunately. I'm going to see if I can find a way around that, because I want to play them as first released without having incongruously good graphics . Riddick is Butcher Bay Developers Cut.... Ooh, also, some of these so I may not be able to get them working!

Spy.

I was surprised to hear the thumbs all agree that Aladdin doesn't hold up. I watched the blu-ray recently, and I thought it looked gorgeous. The narrative's tight, it's full of great lines and performances and character animation.

Twig, are you still watching Supernatural? I'm rewatching it and had forgotten how it just keeps getting better and better. I'm on season 4 now and it is just brilliant episode after episode. The lore, the side characters, the arc plot, the MOTWs, all great. I wholly recommend you stop at the end of season 5 though. The series creator always intended it to run for only that long and it immediately tanks after that point.

I was a little disappointed by the final episode of Brian K Vaughan/Marcos Martin/Muntsa Vicente's The Private Eye, but it was mainly a wrap-up/epilogue type issue, so it'll probably work better on re-reads. The series as a whole was fantastic, though, so I'll reiterate my recommendation once more. I just got the first issue of BKV's new miniseries, We Stand On Guard, on Comixology. He hasn't failed me yet, so I'm looking forward to this. I also just splurged on volumes 3 - 12 of Death Note! Yayyy!

I found setting an alarm to nag me to go to bed every evening at a reasonable time helped, otherwise I'd fall into the internet rabbit hole for hours without realising it.

Oops, haha, I meant elaborate, of course!

Um, care to extrapolate?

I used to know it as a slur meaning homosexual, which was then reclaimed, but a few years ago I was told that it now meant pansexual. I don't know if either of those are still the case or the only meaning(s)...

A good video and a little rant re. job-hunting in the video thread..

I haven't seen that linked to here. It perfectly captures my feelings, though, thanks for linking! Another thing I was going to post here is that I am now in a temp job, and I've taken over from this guy who was, from all evidence and my line manager's opinion, useless. He was disorganised and didn't care about doing a good job. But my line manager just received a reference request for him and gave him a good one because "he didn't do anything appalling". And that pisses me off, because I'm working hard in part so I'll get a good reference, and meanwhile this guy does a shit job and still gets a good one. It burns me to think of the good worker out there looking for a job like I was a while back who's missing out on a job opportunity because my predecessor got there first helped along by my line manager's guilt. And the poor sod who's now going to have the same problems with him as my manager did. EDIT: ha ha, I thought this was the job hunting thread!

I think a keytar player is a bit of an unfair metaphor for colour in film, but I agree with your point! I wonder if this new trend of black and white versions has been influenced by Soderbergh posting a black and white silent copy of Raiders to emphasise editing and other things...

Warning: do not google with a colon in the middle of your search term, it thinks you're trying to do something clever.

Yeah, the structure is pretty much the article-equivalent of a red-lines jpeg.

Well, not exactly 6 months, that's just a rough guess on my part for how long it will take from initial announcement to any concrete details/images etc. All I'm saying is it's pretty amusing to see a new post on there every day going "ANY MORE NEWS YET?!" when they likely have a long wait. It's like a kid getting excited for Christmas in June (speaking of which, I really should bump that thread again soon...).

But you won't find out for another 6 months, so chill out! (But here's a hot scoop: the graphics will be very faithful, HDised versions of the original, they will have a couple of orchestral bits and a load of live jazzy stuff, and they will do a short making of.)

It's pretty funny over at the DF forums, a load of people are itching for more DOTT info, and they really need to relax because we're not going to hear anything else for 6 months and then it'll just be "it will have new graphics which look nice but aren't as good as the original, some commentaries and a bunch of old/new concept art".

My (mostly non-gaming) girlfriend and I didn't enjoy Trine or Lego Star Wars (OT) - too fiddly. What we have enjoyed, though, is single-player games. Limbo we took turns having a life each and figuring out the puzzles together, and The Swindle beta (sorry for another plug!) she would play while I advised and helped with timing - that reminded me of teaching her to play pool irl.

Thanks for the spoiler tags, everyone. I stopped reading them after the first sentence of Reyturner's post, though, as it moved into prediction territory without warning, and I suspect that's the way the conversation went. Pretty much zero spoilers, but just in case:

God, Jurassic World sucked. It was dull and clumsy, from the direction through the script and score even down to the shitty new Amblin ident. I left the screening incredibly frustrated. It doesn't come close to Jurassic Park in any way, it's not as good as JP 3, and it's probably on a par with Lost World. Here's a good comparison article on the first film vs first book. And yeah, that one death scene (I guess we're not bothering with spoiler tags?) felt incongruously sadistic and drawn-out to me also. Things Thumbs listeners will want to know:

Funny you should mention that, my girlfriend is doing some research assistant work for an oral history project of computing in the humanities.