Ben X

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Posts posted by Ben X

  1. Posted

    2 hours ago, dartmonkey said:

    Does anyone have a theory as to why Trek can't do a really top-notch pilot?

     

    Well, it's not like any Trek series (possible exception TOS) really gets going for a fair while, so I think the more pertinent question may be "why does each Trek series take so long to figure out what it is?"

     

    I agree with everyone that Disco is definitely picking up now. The mid-season finale (I assume) was cracking, at least for the first half.

  2. Posted

    Re. the never saying bye on the phone thing, Dan and I wrote a short script when we were 16 or so, which listed some movie cliches (gussied up as the Ten New Commandments, all directed at Hollywood scriptwriters). The phone thing was one of them! Here's the full list (it's all pretty obvious/tired observational comedy, but hey we were only 16 and also the ten commandments conceit caused us to scrape the barrel a bit):

     

     

     


    Thou shalt not show a character’s surprise by having them say "What the…?"

    Thou shalt not ‘trick’ the audience by revealing a character is in fact talking to themselves in the mirror

    Thou shalt not build tension by having a character drop their keys while being chased

    Thou shalt not convey the character’s thought processes by having them speak them out loud.

    Thou shalt not use repetition in dialogue for cheap dramatic emphasis. (e.g. "She’s alright, man. She’s alright…")

    Thou shalt not have characters convey astonishment with a high-pitched, slowly descending whistle:

    Thou shalt not engineer an extra fight scene by having a character needlessly yell “Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah” when attempting a stealth-attack.

    Thou shalt finish telephone conversations properly by saying ‘Goodbye’, like in real life.

    Thou shalt find some way of highlighting relevant information other than a close-up of a finger tapping on it

    Thou shalt not attempt high comedy by surprising a character to the point where they spit out liquid.
     

     

     

    Also, what is the deal with airline food?

  4. Posted

    He sent 'out of the wrapper' condoms and a live rat; I'm going to assume it was a reared-from-birth trained rat in a cage, not some rabid rat he captured in a sewer. He's also since said that on set, everyone was laughing about the gifts and were "thrilled to get them." It's a load of PR/media bullshit, and I think it's a bit silly to start marking down other films simply for having him in them because of it.

  5. Posted

    On 20/05/2017 at 10:04 AM, Ben X said:

    What's wrong with Jared Leto? Surely not the Suicide Squad stuff which was mainly not down to him? His actual performance in that was fine and he was good in Dallas Buyers Club, Requiem For A Dream etc.

     

  8. Posted

    29 minutes ago, TychoCelchuuu said:

    This guy can be good at inspiring me to be creative with the combat. This isn't his craziest video, but it's the mission you just beat:

     

    Wow, that is pretty awesome! I don't have a few of the powers he's using there, though. I guess maybe I needed to be more thorough with hunting for runes, though I did try to get the ones I could unless I couldn't figure out the other way into a blocked room or whatever. The blinking into mid-air for kills is a really good idea, though, I hadn't thought of that. It'll be a big help with the tallboys, I was stupidly always looking for higher ground!

     

    The stuff about having to force yourself to go about things the fun way is something we talked about elsewhere on the forums - about whether designers should "protect players from themselves". I think they should.

  9. Posted

    I'm around 75% through this, I think. I just did the bit at the masquerade ball where you and your mask fit in so you can chat to guests, pick pockets and sneak around for clues. That was fun (although once you're spotted doing something naughty before you work out your target's identity, you're basically screwed).

     

    I'm enjoying this, but not as much as I feel like I should be. I'm having a tough time figuring out why, though. I think it's the weird balance where it acts like it wants to be an RPG, but then you pretty much get forced into combat. And that would probably be fine - it's how I'm playing now - but the combat is let down by the AI, I think. Basically, you trip an alarm, you get a line of four guys running straight at you and then they just crowd in front of you and wale on you. So you either just shoot them one by one, or bullet-time stab them one by one. I really have to force myself to use the more outre powers like death-by-rat. (I've also never had a need to possess a rat or dog.)  It's basically a less successful version of the Bioshock or Jedi Knight combat. The blocking mechanic is great, though; I wonder if the combat would have worked better with sword and magic only, no other weapons. Perhaps fewer but tougher enemies who will chase you over rooftops and such, and maybe actual ammo for each power so you can't just spam one over and over.

     

    And the RPG stuff is generally pretty dull, too. It's a cool setting, but the meat and bones of it is the usual trinket-hunting, diary-reading and politics-discussing. The only interesting character I've met is the 6 year old girl.

     

    There is an impressive amount of detail and the design is generally great. It's nice to have new stuff show up in the hub if you bother to keep an eye out - one time I discovered the tech nerd spying on a maid having a bath - and little things like chucking a body in the water and watching the fish rush to their dinner are fun to notice.  You also do often feel cool, when you pull off a mid-air kill or successfully repel a couple of swords and deal out finishing moves while they're stunned. It's not a bad game, it's just a mix of two genres and is merely satisfactory at both.

  12. Posted

    Okay, I'm enjoying this again now. I've levelled up a fair bit, and quite early, so stuff is feeling a bit more satisfying now. My general strategy is to sneak around as much as I can, collecting runes and what have you, but as soon as anyone spots me, kill 'em all. Stealth is far too difficult and unrewarding to be worth the effort; for example, you're normally fine to loudly and leisurely empty an area of enemies without worry of reinforcements. The other thing to get used to is that basic combat is no use if you have more than one opponent on you, so at that point it's best to either bullet-time your way through the fight, or get to high ground then summon a gang of rats to eat them.

     

    I'm still doing a lot of standard RPG scavenging, which isn't always the best, but the setting is great and they pack a fair amount of interesting content in there to find. The wolf-hounds are as wonderfully designed as the rats, too. I just wish there were a way to knock them unconscious without sleep darts. I've had to kill far too many of them.

  14. Posted

    I'm kind of not enjoying Dishonored so far. I'm getting annoyed by stuff on both the RPG side (e.g. confusing objectives) and the combat side (e.g. long reload times), plus the two aspects are constantly at odds with each other. I'm very much getting a Dark Messiah vibe where they want me to do lots of cool and clever stuff but then make it really fiddly to pull it off.

  16. Posted

    Goddammit, editor, stop restoring my previous content!

     

    Ok, so EYE and SS3 are on the bench, waiting for any co-op-portunities. Here's the thread for the latter. I'm not sure if I'd realised there was a SS2 and that it was so different aesthetically , but frankly I could have done with a bit of that in either of the Sam games I played. The thing everyone remembers about Serious Sam is the bomb-head guys. Why not have some other silly enemies, and a setting other than 'yellow' while they're at it?

     

    Anyway, I'm progressing slowly through Dishonored. I'm going to go FULL SPOILERS so anyone playing along for the first time please be careful when reading (but also please tag spoilers for me if you're going to post about your experience!).

     

    So I've now realised why the rats look so good in this game - they're plot-relevant and also have some mechanics revolving around them. They swarm around the place, reducing bodies, living or dead, to a bloodstain in seconds (an amusing puzzle was having to distract them by flinging some corpses their way). Also, apparently I'll be able to possess them at some point.

     

    The design is all still very nice, lovely character design with the big Olly Moss hands, and a pub setting with a rebel drinking a pint of ale while he spoke to me that almost made me exit the game and head down to my local. I also noticed a food item labeled "Pratchett Jellied Eels", which was a nice nod.

     

    I've been through the standard 'mystical zone with floating bits of walkway and what have you' section and have started picking up some cool powers like dash and 'heart which guides you to pick-ups and also tells you secrets about whichever character or place you point it at'. It's all fairly linear so far, but I assume it'll open up a bit. Dark Messiah wasn't that open, but I get the impression this leans closer to immersive sim territory. I found the very first stealth-or-fight option they presented me with to be impossible to stealth through, but apart from that everything has felt pretty sturdy - even rope-climbing! Also the block mechanic seems pretty forgiving. I think maybe it will always block but you have to time it correctly to daze the opponent, which feels like a good way to do it.

  22. Posted

    Yeah, I agree with all of this, though the Aliens thing doesn't bug (lol) me any more than the fact that Stand By Me wasn't out yet either. I feel like in Season 3 they're going to try even more to do stuff in their own voice and it will either make or break the show.

     

    The other problem with this show is you never know whether they're referencing or ripping off, especially when they leave the 80s - I'm not sure about where the JP thing falls. The bit in Argo's first spoiler was very close to a scene/thread in X-Men First Class..!

     

    Btw @Jake, it seems like we're still doing spoiler tags in this thread and I'd say the middle of your middle paragraph is on the edge...

  23. Posted

    Yeah, hopefully two of those things will be sorted out immediately in, or even by the start of, season 3:

     

     

     


    El's jealousy seemed pretty Mike-specific (and also could be seen as part of her lack of social training/experience as well as her dalliance with the dark side), and Mike's hostility seemed to stem from resenting a potential El-replacement while he was still grieving. Hopefully El will see that Make (that's the best 'shipping compound I can do) is not a thing and also maybe learn a new rule like "friends aren't dicks to each other over boys", and Mike will snap out of it now he knows El is alive.
     

     

     

    That doesn't change the fact that they went there in this season, but at least they didn't dedicate too much time to it, I guess. Maybe if the characters redeem themselves enough it will feel more like Lucas' initial distrust of El in season 1, just stretched over a season break.

     

    Re. the writers (not the character - I don't think this was an anachronism) straight up quoting another movie's dialogue, I didn't find that any more distracting than the teacher's minute-long monologue to his date (and practically straight through the fourth wall) about why John Carpenter's The Thing is awesome, in season 1...

  25. Posted

    This is all reassuring, thanks everyone! I'm sure I'll find something to grumble about though.

     

    Speaking of which, that guy Mandalore who did the EYE video review that eot linked to a while back (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AScCVzENcjs) has done a fair few reviews of games I've played for this thread, and he's the opposite of me in that he puts a huge amount of effort into wrestling the best out of even the most obtuse or flawed games. Fun watches.