syntheticgerbil

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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About syntheticgerbil

  • Rank
    Garbage Can
  • Birthday 11/24/1985

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  • AIM
    syntheticgerbil
  • Website URL
    http://www.mrseanlane.com
  • Skype
    mrseanlane

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Austin, TX

Converted

  • Biography
    Was the lead singer of XTC before they broke up
  • Location
    Austin
  • Interests
    Drawing, panic freeze, internet time wasting, and reading very slowly
  • Occupation
    Animator/Artist thing
  • Favorite Games
    LucasArts adventures, Rayman, Wario, Oddworld

Recent Profile Visitors

4497 profile views
  1. Movie/TV recommendations

    I am coming back here years after Mr. Robot ended to say I fucking hate that show and I'm sorry I ever recommended that pseudoscientific, psychobabble filled, rip off, plot-dumping, purposefully convoluted trash heap of a show. I don't want it out there that I think that show is amazing. There's enough jagoffs that proclaim the creator a genius. If Jen is still around, she was right about everything. However, the actual tech show that will capture your heart and soul is Halt and Catch Fire. I highly, highly recommend it after the first two thirds of an uneven first season (and an awful intro scene). Everything after is golden and engaging. Four (sometimes five) characters all dynamically bouncing off of eachother and creating new technology and often failing. Starting in the early '80s to the mid '90s. It's affected me more emotionally than maybe any show I've ever seen. It unfortunately doesn't really shine unless you watch all four seasons through, but it's worth it. Feels too short but long enough, 40 eps. I can't think of any show where the characters grow and change effectively and with a clear trajectory. Feels too real. The music choices are top notch and appropriate at all times. Love the score. There's certain parts that remind me of my childhood and going with my dad to work at Data General before I grew up and realized I hate his guts. But you know. Oh and for all the LucasArts geeks in here, they recreated Habitat in the show sort of, but it uses the graphics from Maniac Mansion. Ron Gilbert was on a live stream a couple of years back and they read my question about the show but he had not gotten to the Habitat part yet. Bummer.
  2. Kickstarters

    Hmm, I saw that a few months ago and loved the art, but figured it'd be bad with a bunch of alt-right/Gamergate type "humor," considering there was a "safe space invaders" in one screenshot. Seemed like a beacon of what to expect to me. But just now I read a few reviews and they mostly say it's pretty good and oddly respectful towards women, well as much as Larry could be. Then because of the time travel concept there's a contrast of perspective at the end and Larry learns how women are treated in contrast to the '80s according to the Adventure Gamers review? I also looked at the credits, since I kind of had a hunch because of the way they were drawn, and it appears the art team seems comprised of mostly women. Also much of the team seems to have worked at Daedalic before. I'm so confused. Maybe I'll give it a shot. It appears Jan Rabson is voicing the character, and that trailer you posted Ben was made before his lines were recorded. I wonder if Neil Ross as the narrator from Larry 6 and 7 is back.. Gameplay videos seem to have no narrator whatsoever. Much like Gary Owes in Space Quest he plays the role as an antagonistic narrator, a big part of what makes these games enjoyable for me. Reloaded had some guy who tried his best but it was grating. That title though, what the fuck is "Wet Dreams Don't Die?" Exactly what is that riffing on there? The Robin Williams movie What Dreams May Come? I'm almost certain it's probably a better game than that Reloaded mess in every way. These people didn't even need a Kickstarter!
  3. Kickstarters

    Hah, yeah Larry 7 was on the boat. I never bothered with any past that one, post Sierra. They all looked so awful, like they shouldn't have existed. They also dialed up the raunchiness by a significant amount from what I've read. Glad to hear there's another two who love the new Tex Murphy! I should really get on it. New Years resolution! It's funny to hear the gameplay is terrible, Rodi. I know it's the same old, but it seemed so innovative back when Under a Killing Moon came out, even though I am pretty sure the 3D scenes ran at like 10 fps at best on our computer. It's yet another thing that only that series can get away with.
  4. Psychonauts 2

    Christ, the animation on these characters is top notch. I'm gonna really enjoy jumping around as Raz more than ever.
  5. Kickstarters

    Oh hey, this is fun, I tend to have backed more music, shows, and art books on Kickstarter at this point, so I'm assuming this is over the video games only. I'm gonna use your formatting Henke. Broken Age Backed: 2012 | Status: Fully released | Contentment level: The wait on this was kind of painful, because I went with the physical rewards and the game was well released on so many platforms and various boxed versions for I think at least two years before Kickstarter backers got their goods. It got to the point where I went on their forums just to leave an angry message, but then I just felt bad about it after. So I didn't really start any part of Broken Age until getting the box, which is generally my excuse on dealing with backlog. Broken Age was a little drier and darker than what I expected out of a Tim Schafer game, but overall I enjoyed it. I guess I feel like the big issue is the art style and animation weren't really my thing. Not into the whole Bagel art even though I know people love it. However writing and story was great and it was nice to play some puzzles in the latter half that I felt all had their shit together. I went through the game without cheating once, and I'd say usually I cheat 2-3 times on average per adventure game. Tim Schafer again has proven to me he has a very intuitive way of designing games. And that documentary, holy shit. Three discs crammed full of great video, multiple hour long or more episodes, commentary, asides, and all kinds of extras. I left feeling for everyone there and involved with the project and wished so bad somehow I worked at Double Fine. I got a lot of mileage out of that thing, gotta be reaching 50-60 hours or more... possibly. I sort of wish there was a boxset for all of the Devs Play stuff as well from DF's Youtube channel. Party of Sin Backed: 2012 | Status: Fully released | Contentment level: I think I got into a little bit of Kickstarter fury there at the beginning and randomly gave $15 to this game. Doubt anyone has ever heard of it. I liked the concept art and gameplay idea, but on execution it ended up pretty crap and clunky. They sure did deliver fast though! I don't know if it was the team's fault, it seriously felt like a game some people in a game developer college program put together and that this was their final project. I suspect the team didn't necessarily mesh or know eachother that well. I could be wrong though. Oh well no big deal, it was only $15. Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded Backed: 2012 | Status: Fully released | Contentment level: Christ was this some garbage, which was a surprise to no one. I was originally mildly excited because Al Lowe was involved, but then that creep Paul Trowe at Replay Games was acting like a fool everywhere, a seriously unhinged individual. Replay didn't even need to exist, they did nothing in terms of design, they just coordinated the outsource game development company with the writers. I guess he proved his worth with an underage sex scandal and is a registered sex offender now. He's still trolling around Austin right now doing who the hell knows what. The actual game itself, everything was literally awful except for the backgrounds. Characters and animations were pisspoor. The drawings felt awkward and amateurish and people moved in a very stilted way. The voice acting was shit, except for Jan Rabsen I suppose. The narrator was grating as fuck. And they even failed at drawing any of the women in any attractive fashion. There was some nice portraits in some of the old Larry VGA games, but this time it seemed like someone's fetish Deviant Art where every woman was stacked with unnatural balloon tits. It wishes so hard it was Leisure Suit Larry 7, but there's no way it could ever be. That game had some great animation talent, voice acting, design, and writing. Also it turns out Al Lowe pretty much wasn't involved with this whole fucking thing anyway and quietly ran away as soon as Paul Trowe started acting like a creep. He admitted on an AMA that actually Josh Mandel did all the new writing, and it shows. I know Josh Mandel is sort of a celebrity with some adventure game players, especially at Adventuregamers.com where he has posted in the forums, but I despise his writing. I played more than enough of his work in the '90s to experience how he just writes the shit out of everything to the point of exhaustion and sees what sticks. So everything he does tends to be paired with extremely long winded descriptions of things that might have a few vaguely funny elements in there that seem to just go nowhere. I much prefer things to be closer to LucasArts games where descriptions and dialogue tend to be short and snappy but memorable. Beyond that, Josh Mandel was is here at his worst, turning everything about the original Larry games where it was mostly about just what a creepy, pathetic, loser Larry is and just turned everything into lurid raunchy descriptions that this time seemed to be very angry at women, spending a lot of time poking fun at feminism. Also tons of descriptions of prostitution, sex toys, gay jokes, racism, and just was plain ol' meanspirited but not in a fun way, if that is even possible. Plus I have no idea why there was such a high amount of bestiality jokes. After this, I thought maybe Leisure Suit Larry was actually always this bad and so I ended up replaying the whole series shortly after. And I still like them a lot. Al Lowe was much better at throwing dirty jokes out there with a good natured element, plus the guy could be short and snappy, and some of the more questionable things in the earlier games seemed more to be a product of the '80s. LSL5 and 7 were still as great as I remembered. The VGA remake of 1 is far superior to this drivel. Larry 6 kind of had some crap I didn't enjoy though, but that's another rant. So redeemed I suppose? At least in my eyes. Puzzles were still mostly bad among all the games though, but that's Sierra in general I feel. I also gave Freddy Pharkas another shot and the game was also still as enjoyable as when I was a kid. A lot of it filled with Josh Mandel's obvious wordiness but it was rather balanced and I found it unobstrusive. Seems like there were still too many bestiality jokes, can't imagine what Josh Mandel's hang ups were with this. But otherwise Mandel's pretty subdued in this game, maybe he got worse as he got older? Or maybe it was that on this game it appears he and Al Lowe were truly working together instead of Al Lowe pissing off the way he did with Larry Reloaded. The Banner Saga Backed: 2012 | Status: Fully released | Contentment level: I don't know, I was more excited for this game just because of the art and animation rather than the gameplay. On delivery, I found the game far too wordy and confusing, plus I didn't feel like it needed branching narrative paths since the gameplay was already confusing enough for me, so I gave up pretty earlier on. I think the problem was I just backed a style of game that wasn't for me. Glad everyone else loved it and the team had a major success to get two sequels though. Jane Jensen's Moebius, Gabriel Knight Remake, and some kind of Bulldog iOS storybook Backed: 2012 | Status: Fully released | Contentment level: I don't actually know what the fuck this was, but I guess I got a bunch of games for "free" that I didn't even bargain for. I never bothered playing Moebius because everyone said it was terrible and for some reason very misogynistic upon release. The graphics were pretty bad and I heard the puzzles were worse. So I was pretty disenchanted. Then I got a Gabriel Knight 1 remake in the mail, and it was this amateurish 2.5D with new voice actors. This didn't need to exist, it was such a pointless endeavor. Not sure what to say about that bulldog storybook. Seemed like it was aimed at old people who enjoyed overly drawn awkward photoreal art. Also I decided I was done with ever playing a Jane Jensen game ever again. The saving grace of this Kickstarter is I put in $100 and then resold everything I got in the mail on ebay for about $160-170. Profit I guess? Spaceventure Backed: 2012 | Status: Fully released | Contentment level: ? (if ever released probably ) I don't know what to feel about this Kickstarter, but I'm not at all angry. I think I'm just sad. The Space Quest series meant a lot to me in middle school where I tended to just tuck myself in my room and play adventure games in the dark trying not to think of other kids bullying me or how lonely I was. I had played almost all of the LucasArts games at a younger age and was just trying to get whatever lesser known adventure games I could buy with lawnmower money. Space Quest was among the best I played at that time and I replayed them so many times. It was nice to see Scott Murphy and Mark Crow back together. Concept art looked good, people seemed to be having a swell time replaying the old games on streams and waxing nostalgic with other Sierra developers stopping in. I remember reading a few interviews with Scott Murphy over the last few decades. After Sierra died he seemed like he had been having such a hard time and never reentered game development. I was really hoping this would be something he could do to make himself handy as a writer/designer again. I guess a year or so into it, Scott quietly disappeared from the project because his mom got cancer and subsequently died and then they announced that Scott himself had prostate cancer a few months back and he needed a fundraiser to pay for the medical costs. It was $10,000 which for US medical care and having cancer, is probably an extremely low estimate. Guy will probably be in debt the rest of his life. There's some angry backers here, one even suggested in the comments that Scott Murphy made this up for getting more money for the game. Anyway, I'm sure everyone on this game is working for free at this point probably outside of their day jobs. Yet even six years later, long overdue, updates still get squeezed out with visible progress. They recently recorded all of the big name professional voice actors and I have no idea how they were able to afford these people at this point, unless they firmly put a significant amount of that money aside to spend on them. I'm deeply saddened that Gary Owens died before this game was finished. I replayed the Space Quest series this year as well just to try to feel a little happier and I wasn't disappointed. I think I laughed more than ever at Gary Owens' line reads on SQ4 and 6 than ever before. Otherwise, I am pretty sure this will be a crap looking game with maybe passable design and great voice acting and possibly great writing. The 3D models and animations are really bad. I don't think anyone working on this game has any clue what they are doing. But my heart still goes out to them. I want to see this game get done, even if it's past mediocre, just so everyone can feel accomplished. Project Fedora Backed: 2012 | Status: Fully released | Contentment level: ? (probably ) I still haven't played this! I feel really bad about it. It seems so good, I just gotta put in the time, which since it's on PC, I always forget. I get the feeling I'll love it. I've always loved me some Tex Murphy. Gave my dad a copy of the game, he loved it, it's the only thing we've ever pretty much agreed on. Everyone who backed it seems to be satisfied. Chris Jones doesn't seem to have aged much. I think there's even a new one starting soon. Shovel Knight Backed: 2013 | Status: Fully released | Contentment level: I backed this and played a few levels in and then realized they kept making new content and updates and rereleasing them as patches or retail sets for various platforms, that I have completely lost track of which is the best set with the most exclusives. Everything I've played has been great though. I have the art book and it's very lovely. The developers have been super nice and generous to everyone. So I think the final Switch retail/boxed release is chock full of all the good stuff? I put it on hold until the developers decide that they are finished. But everyone loves Shovel Knight so I'll probably love it too when I finally complete it. No idea how this team got by so far with all of this free DLC. I hope their next game is great! Armikrog Backed: 2013 | Status: Fully released | Contentment level: I didn't even play it. I waited and waited for my boxed release, which it seemed like for a second there that no one was ever going to get their physical rewards and they took the money and ran. There was barely any updates after the game was finished. According to reviews and friends, it was a buggy poorly designed mess, and even the graphics which were the major selling point were glitchy as hell. Supposedly most of this was never patched. They made a stretch goal to make an exclusive WiiU version of the game with different functions. of course the game was just released the same as anywhere else. The package I backed at didn't have any extra rewards than the tier below it, so I was screwed at a $35 difference. In the meantime after between all that waiting, Trump was elected and Doug TenNapel I guess found it safe to go back to his ways of being a bigoted piece of shit, if that had ever even softened in the first place. After he purposefully misgendered the woman who wrote a Kotaku article criticizing the design of Earthworm Jim (of which he wasn't even a fucking designer!) I decided I was done with this petty manchild. So with great sadness I resold all TenNapel merchandise I ever owned for a few hundred on ebay, then resold the Armikrog box straight to ebay the second it came in the mail when it finally came. I probably made a $20 profit when all was said and done. I'm just angry and sad but I should have dropped TenNapel from the list of creators I follow decades ago when I started understanding why TenNapel was an asshole in the first place. Fuck tolerance of people like this honestly, it's not a different point of view, it's just hate. I'm too old for this shit. Thimbleweed Park Backed: 2014 | Status: Fully released | Contentment level: This is installed and I mean to get to it. People on Idlethumbs forums here didn't seem to enjoy it, but I have friends who did and I suppose the fans on the Kickstarter were satisfied. I'm giving this a thumbs up because I got 60 mini podcasts with Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick talking about game development and design and other things in life. I already have enjoyed those enough as it is. Starr Mazer Backed: 2015 | Status: Fully released | Contentment level: This was a mistake. I don't think this game will ever come out. And if it does it'll probably be an hour long. This is the only game where I have actually asked the developers for a refund multiple times. It looked promising at first, great art and animation as well as novel gameplay ideas, but then all of the updates seems to have just been the developers playing other games on Twitch for very long periods of time for over a year. No major game progress shown. Then there was a bunch of lawsuit drama with the composer who seemed to have become unhinged. Before that she transitioned and so when this lawsuit came out, a bunch of Gamergate people tacked on to this drama and of course made a bunch of long winded transphobic Youtube videos about it and got that shock value ad money. Yuck. I guess the developers couldn't control this? but I hate how their excuse for no work on this project done for a year was because of this lawsuit over music. Why on earth would that mean don't work on the game? Sometime in the middle of all of this, they lost their whole art team, so then what's the point of me even backing the game then if it's not going to look as advertised? The backers got upset at no progress in the comments and then the developers promised monthly updates. That went on for about 5 months and I went from being soured on the new inferior art to surprised and excited once they stepped up their game on the last update and the art was shaping out to be great. Then I guess the team has disappeared again, no updates. So they didn't really learn anything from this in the end. At this point I could really still use that refund. Psychonauts 2 Backed: 2017| Status: Fully released | Contentment level: ? I was never a huge fan of Psychonauts in terms of the characters and universe, but the levels were great. I imagine the same will be true here but with much more refined mechanics than before if that alpha video release is something to go by. I get the feeling this won't be out until 2021-2022. So until then... Oddworld Artbook Backed: 2018 | Status: Fully released | Contentment level: This isn't really a game but you get digital versions of all of the Oddworld games for free. I have an older Oddworld artbook and I love the shit out of it. I have seen new previews of this artbook and it seems to be chock full of even more great making of art. Plus I just love Oddworld. I can't imagine being disappointed when the book finally comes out, as it's a pretty low stakes Kickstarter. So I guess my video game Kickstarter experience has been overall more negative than positive. I've had pretty much 100% positive experiences with all of the other mediums I have put money in to Kickstarter though.
  6. I don't see what everyone sees in that movie ...

    Haha I love that my bad joke about Die Hard and Family Matters was lumped into this thread, because I actually like the movie Die Hard.
  7. BigJKO's Thread of 3D Shit

    I love your work so much.
  8. Redo of the Colossus (Shadow of the Colossus thread)

    I mean Austin represent and all, but maybe it really is time they venture out on their own after this? They are probably right that there's not many designers worth their salt in Austin. But I wonder if the next remaster is ICO then. I think if I'm going to go on a remake not only for graphics but controls as well, much like Shadow, I would choose maybe the Prince of Persia trilogy? Ubisoft had the HD PS3 release but none looked as good as Forgotten Sands. If this sort of thing happened, I would hope they would rewrite, rerecord, and remodel all of the characters in Warrior Within. Gameplay on that was great but ech. I actually really like Two Thrones and feel like it was given a bad rep for unfortunately following Warrior Within. But hey guys I started the PS4 one today after finishing off all the trophies on the PS3 one. God is it amazing looking. The art direction is much more moody than PS3 but that's okay, I think it's just gorgeous. I really love looking at the grass. I think maybe these are some of the best realistic graphics I've seen in a while outside of Uncharted 4. Still really not so into the change in Wander's face, but Mono looks the same and is perfect. I like the new flares to Argo's animations, plus little things like floating dust clouds and fireflies. Just lovely. And yes sure enough controls are much better now. I like that I can finally fucking dodge roll by just pressing a button instead of holding R1, analog stick, and pressing square at the same time. The lizards now have a little bit of bio luminescent glow to them to make them a little easier to see assuming you don't have the lizard stone. Also the lizards (which I felt always just looked like geckos) are more blump and cute now. I love it. Thank fucking god seeing the fruit in the fruit trees is much more manageable this time around. Sometimes a tree with really dull colored fruit would make me want to tear my hair out looking for it. I'm not so into the white on yellow fill up for the stamina circle but I suppose I'll get used to it. Bluepoint really did just go all out on this. This is gonna be a treat, even if I have to play through it five times to get everything. I hope I have time to just sit in front of the TV all day for it soon. Oh I had purchased the limited edition with the DLC weapons. No one is really missing anything. I'm not into spotted Argo, he looks like a cow. I'll be fine with the brown and white options later. The bow allows you to make the hit points highlight from far away by aiming but I think that sucks the fun out of it a bit. And I also have a cloak and sword that constnatly heal you a little bit faster, but I didn't really notice any significant difference. But those are in no way game breaking since health isn't such a big deal in this game outside of time attacks. It's always stamina that is most important. Just wow though. I hope whatever Bluepoint is remaking next is something I really like.
  9. Redo of the Colossus (Shadow of the Colossus thread)

    I think I'll end up loving the PS4 one more, because as is, the PS3 one is something I wish I loved more. I don't enjoy it as much as ICO, even though I think I should since I really love giant boss fights? Haven't played The Last Guardian yet. I don't know why but I was one of the only few to make it out to the end of the Idlethumbs forum playthrough of the game long ago, and even then I found it somewhat painful. It was possible I was just having a bad time in my life or that I just often didn't know what to do on each colossus, but I had a better time replaying it on hard this time around on PS3 two weeks ago. Just checking out some screenshot and video comparisons with the new versions, I do know I already miss the blown out lighting and the muddy shadows but I'm wondering if I will forget that upon starting the PS4 one. The differences with Wander's face between the models is a little jarring, but since there are very rarely any parts where his facial expressions are on display, so I'm not sure I have much loyalty to the original. Maybe controls isn't exactly the right way to sum it up. It's a combination of wonky physics and more "unresponsive" controls. The jumping is kind of yuck feeling sometimes when you are just trying to scale something that is about 4 feet and bouncing off the edge, but then it can feel amazing when jumping from a ledge up high down to a colossus. Getting some of the lizards on the "scaleable" rocks sort of makes me feel queasy because you just kind of mash X around the top edge rounded low poly objects that doesn't seem level enough to properly scale. Also I don't know what it is, but getting on the horse even when standing still can usually mean you have to jump straight up 3-4 times until you are in the exact position. I think maybe I could do with more than one swing of the sword with the attack button, but instead it's a lunge and Wander stops dead. Really these are little issues that fall outside of the colossi. Horse controls fine, I like being able to hold triangle and it will sometimes pathfind for me so I don't have to meticulously steer a horse, so kudos. I think the general idea of how they should work is great and really not that complicated. What really breaks it down is you start hyperfocusing on the lack of refinement when doing time attacks. Like the amount of times where I have been on a level surface with colossus weakpoint, no shaking, and holding R1 means Wander suddenly starts hanging sideways 90 degrees is infuriating. It's readily apparent every time you down the gecko looking colossus. There's so many jumps from either shaky surfaces or colossi where you have to jump from the very edge but at the last minute either the controls fail (more on that) or the platform below you briefly comes out from under your feet for a few milliseconds and then you just fall. Also there are cutscenes in the middle of boss fights sometimes that aren't actually true cutscenes and you can move Wander while they happen.Sometimes you can die or take damage in the middle of the cutscene despite not pressing anything should a rock or something fall on you or your character is under a colossus foot when it's done loading. I think though what pisses me off most is whoever made the decision to have Wander stay down for so long when seriously hurt. There are bosses where you can't get up and then they keep attacking you while down and you die. You can lose like 10 minutes of your life just because of a mistake like that (here's looking at you #15). The fireballs on the last colossus hilariously try to give you some mercy by waiting for you to get up unlike other bosses, but sometimes it seems a big bugged and he just shoots fireballs at you until you die. So sometimes the game basically can turn into a one hit kill situation that you have to wait on. But on top of all of this, Fumito Ueda specifically said in one interview (which I can't find at the moment thanks to the PS4 version taking over all newsfeeds) that control failure was programmed into Shadow of the Colossus, in order to give a sense of your own frailty. So button presses just sometimes won't do something you want it to do because that's how it's supposed to be. I mean I get it, I'm pretty sure ICO was also made to be like that, feeling very weak. And I can forgive all this roughness if there just weren't time attacks to go along with the end of the game to see everything. So even though I do see some PS4 reviews complain about the controls, I can't imagine they are in anyway as bad as the original. Like if they built it from the ground up how can it be worse? The only thing I have to go by is the difficulty rating for the platinum at playstationstrophies.org and it is significantly lower, so I'm going to guess all is well and good now.
  10. Redo of the Colossus (Shadow of the Colossus thread)

    I'm trying to finally finish the PS3 HD version (Which we started 5 years ago on Idlethumbs community playthrough) so I can move on to playing the PS4 and I can't wait to see how they unfucked the controls and camera. Like seriously anyone who has suffered through some of the hard mode time attacks to get all the weapons should know that it's not really a test of skill but more of a test of patience with the game's physics and janky ass controls. Not to mention it seems like there's some kind of bug where some giants just constantly shake on hard mode unless you do convoluted things. (I'm looking at you bastard fuck #3, I beat that shit after hundreds of attempts over 6 hours) While I fail to see why Team ICO ever made the design decision to have time attacks in a game that controls mostly like dogshit at least now I hear the time attacks are feasible for common players and they can get all if not most of the items without breaking a controller. Seems nice. It honestly seems like adding in weapons as DLC is fine even though some consider it sacrilege. I never understood the reason for having weapons only appear after doing time attacks on New Game+. I feel like the game would have been more fun if you could have earned some of the less game breaking ones (no one hit sword of course) like fire arrows, whistling arrows, extra defense cloak, and extra damage mask in the first playthrough. Plus for anyone interested in scavenger hunts or making the game easier in terms of extra stamina and health, it never made sense to me that you don't earn the ability to know the lizard and fruit locations at some point in the first playthrough. I don't know what the point is for designing 16 extra abilities and items if only a small percentage of gamers will ever see them.
  11. I had a random thought about movies

    I had to look up what the shit Delicatessen was doing on that list, but I can't figure it out. Miramax originally released Amelie, but if a lot of those films are associated with Weinstein because Miramax had the United States publishing rights, I would doubt they are any movies to avoid since almost all of what Miramax did publish internationally has been sold off. Like I know for instance now Sony has US publishing rights to Trainspotting. Also Miramax handled Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke with rewrites by Neil Gaiman if I remember. And on top of that Jeanne Pierre Jeunet appears to deeply hate the Weinsteins even before all the sexual harassment stuff came up.
  12. I had a random thought about movies

    Agreed 100%. That's usually the stance I take on stuff like this. I can't separate the art from the artist because I'll just be looking for the bullshit seething out the sides. Erkki, I definitely think it's easy to write off Polanski because he is a director, or auteur, or whatever, and there's not a huge list of movies to watch. I personally try not do give Disney any of my money (so many reasons if I don't have to) but that's easy for me because I don't care about Disney characters, most of their animated output, dislike Star Wards, dislike superheroes, and generally have a bad time with anything they produce. However it's impossible for me to boycott everything Disney because they have stake in so many things you wouldn't even know, plus I have to give into support the Double Fine remasters of the LucasArts games so they've got me by the balls. But I do get when there's a bit of a moral dilemma it's harder to defend why you are still a fan of the said person's media, especially if you liked it before you "know." But on the other hand I personally don't understand why it wouldn't bother you to mess up your enjoyment of the film, but I also don't understand why these famous actors keep working with directors like this. Like all these prodigious actors don't have to star in a Woody Allen movie but they still do and I don't get it. I think maybe having the Weinstein involvement with getting a film made doesn't mean a ton, because lets say they weren't the producers, it very possible the film in question would have been made with other producers. If anything a movie would have been better for it because by all accounts of those two awful men, directors hate them and they always interfere and seem to almost try to sabotage the movies they produce and create bad blood. At least those are the stories I've heard with the directors I like. I worry more about people like Tarantino (who I am not really a fan of) who was really chummy with him and seemed to have known about Harvey Weinstein's bad behavior and basically covered their ears and did not speak up for victims. Who knows what other prominent famous pals he had like also turned a blind eye? I can't imagine you see this stuff when you are a Weinstein adversary getting funded by the Weinsteins/Miramax, but when you are a pal surely some alarms should go off. But since the Weinsteins are done (or at least Harvey) any kind of moral dilemma I could have is too late since all of the films I like with their involvement have already been produced and probably taken my money. Although now that I say this, I wonder do producers get royalties on films they produce or is it the initial return on investment that they just take? I imagine it would be different if Miramax still existed because they were the owners under Disney or however the hell that worked, but then do the Weinsteins still see a dime of Miramax movie rights that have been eaten up by other studios?
  13. Jeff Goldblum

    I ran out of vanilla Law and Order to watch while working so I downloaded a bunch of Criminal Intent because I knew detective Mike Logan became a lead again at some point. Criminal Intent mostly sucks, but not as much as SVU, but Goldblum is a grand ol' time on this show.
  14. Mindhunter

    I would say it definitely picks up in episode 2. I'm guessing season 2 will also pick up even more if that is indeed happening.