syntheticgerbil

Man, what a dick Indy is. Boy would he have had egg on his face if Sophia had a knife thrown in her gut.

A few years ago, I once did a Nielsen ratings packet for a couple of weeks after being chosen through this survey site I previously used. I think I maybe made $30 from filling it out? I didn't really watch most of the shows if any because I didn't really watch TV then and was already downloading shows on the internet. I mostly just picked shows I liked and found out their times and wrote them down without having seen them.

Wrong it's for making winky faces.

Hmmm, that might explain why Kenny seemed mad at me starting Episode 4 from what I can tell even though I didn't do anything wrong outside of protesting the Larry stituation and helped him in every way episode 3. He didn't seem to forget me I guess at least it remembered I was nice enough to everyone to still get them all to come with me on Episode 5, which is good. I did have to play the I rewound the game after failing to convince him the first time. Actually thinking about it, there were a couple of small things I remember people commenting incorrectly on a few of my past actions during Episode 4 where I was thinking the saved game may have lost some information and filled the choices in as random. I can't remember specifically what they were though, but it was at least two things that were not a big deal. At least it remembered I did not raid the abandoned car. Crap, I guess Kenny is not THAT inconsistent. My apologies guys. The railroad spike remover and wrench thing was really weird because it did show Lee using the right tool after unlocking the car, but every use after that turned out to be the wrench. The icon was correct the whole time though. Also when propping the door open in the train station, the wrench and other tool (forgot what it was) showed up as hotspots in the environment but did not do anything when pressing X (on PS3). I am not sure there is any impact to the plot based on the tool you choose, but I suppose I will find out on my second playthrough. I'm planning to be a complete dishonest and angry jerk on my second playthrough, but maybe my third I will try again with telling Clementine the truth on episode 1 and seeing

The problem is they received a batch of new games for all intents and purposes and sold them as used to line their pockets. Instead of getting them shrinkwrapped or just calling them new, they do this. And on top of that, I've had two cases at Gamestop where they sold me a new game without the shrink wrap and a dinky sticker around the case labeled NEW. I asked the first time because I was so confused and thought I somehow was being given a used copy, but the clerk insisted it was new. When I purchased a game the second time like this, I didn't ask. I don't really need the shrinkwrap, but I do hate getting rid of sticker goo. Anyway that was years ago, but they have practiced it before and I can confirm first hand. Maybe one could argue because a new game is not coming shrinkwrapped, then for all intents and purposes, it's used, but that really is only a concern for collectors and devious resellers, not for people who actually want to own and play the game. So really the consumer and manufacturer is getting a bad deal here and the price is being inflated either way when a new batch should mean temporarily lower prices on other used copies. Gamestop wins, no one else does, not fans or the developers. Anyway, I guess this particularly annoys me because I have the same problem with a few artists who regularly release art books in limited quantities because they aren't popular enough to sell retail with a SKU but are enough for the fans who want them to grab them up. But once resellers get word of this and see an artist has a dedicated amount of fans who will buy every art book, they most likely end up buying about a third to half of the stock to resell if Ebay is to be trusted. Pisses me off so much when I miss a book. EDIT: Blurp, this exchanged happened already. Errr... I'll just leave my message anyway.

Received my Kick Heart Blu-ray in the mail today and gave it a watch. It was way too short for me, clocking in at 12 minutes, but I guess they were initially only looking to raise $150k for the budget, which seems about right for a traditionall animated short, even if some parts had major corners cut. I had fun, it was a bit weird. Also the story was very strangely similar to Nacho Libre.

I get the feeling Kenny's inconsistencies don't necessarily come from him being so real, but that he is the only character with major choices carried out through 5 episodes and he mostly likely started to become a task for the writers and designers to keep track of, much like Lee just doing everything all alone while characters watched and talked at him in Episode 5. Much like the stranger accused me of not telling Clementine I was a convicted murderer when I told her in episode 1, down to a part of the game where I was suddenly using the wrench even though I had chosen the railroad spike remover. I don't know the inner workings of what events are counted more drastically or what doesn't matter at all, but I am not buying the fact that Kenny is some kind of stroke of brilliance just because real people are sometimes inconsistent, especially in a game that wants you to think about what you are saying to people. I mean the Walking Dead can't be perfect, and that's okay. Or really, what Gormongous already said.

But in Monster House the house's face was done with mocap! The possibilities!

Ah, I might just end up importing it then. As far as I know the UK release is pretty much the new Japanese Blu-ray box set split in to two releases and translated from what I understand. I prefer to just buy these things domestically because importing makes my money sad.

Yeah, you can never win the mocap vs. animation argument. If you point out awkward, bland, or stiff mocap work, the reply will be that the technology is not there yet but it will be soon. Paying animators is seen as an unnecessary expense by many business heads I think. I guess in the end it technically is an animation generator very good for realistic type CG characters, but at best that's all often just animators painstakingly going over the mocap frames to add the needed exaggeration and clean up. Also that Sonic CD intro is still fucking awesome. Nothing else Sonic in the animated world has ever reached that quality. And everything else on that page. Great link Mr. Smell, now that I've seen Day of the Tentacle and Akira on the same page I'm going to waste another hour fucking around on the internet. EDIT: AHHH NOW I SAW A CLIP FROM THE MASAAKI YUASA GENIUS PARTY SHORT. EDIT 2: Oh wait, already ran out of pages, can get back to work now.

What does the levels tool look like on Paintshop?

Hopefully it's the same as the one in the UK I've been eyeing, with the extra Ein short.

I always have a hell of a time getting something to easily open a bitmap these days.

Yeah since season 4, I have been torrenting all Breaking Bad episodes because neither Hulu Plus nor Netflix gets AMC shows. I did the same with the second season of The Killing. The only way to legitimately watch them upon release is by having cable or satellite with an AMC subscription, and in this day and age, fuck that shit. It's ridiculous because Netflix or Hulu tends to be the way a lot of people are age are getting in to these shows in the first place but then we can't watch the new episodes of many things with the same subscriptions.

Oh man, I used to get so angry at the fake bloopers at the end of the earlier Pixar movies. What was the point of that shit if they were not actual bloopers? One of the cuts always ended with a character farting and another character waving their hand around awkwardly. And I am not being high brow here, I felt embarrassed for Pixar in elementary and middle school when seeing these, when dick and fart jokes were prime. The other best trend with CG animated movies when I still bothered to watch some of them, was the ending with an awkward and embarrassing dance sequence to some generic pop song. At some point the villains would inevitably let go of their shame and start dancing too. I swear there's some movie Dreamworks movie where the villians were released from prison for the sake of the dance. I think only Pixar didn't do the dance sequence endings, but it's possible one or two of their movies gave in. Meh, it's for sure more in the self marketing department. The dude also does thrilling intros to the Tinkerbell CG movies that started after the Disney/Pixar merger. Which Lasseter to trust? This is pure Lasseter propaganda. Lasseter was not there when the original Miramax/Disney deal was formed over Princess Mononoke. I recall a comment thread on a news post on Cartoon Brew years ago by an early involved Ghibli translator for who was Streamline pissed that Lasseter now takes credit for somehow bringing Miyazaki for everyone to see in the United States, uncut. I can probably dig it up if you are interested. All the while you don't hear much about Jerry Beck for majorly helping Japanese animation studios get exposure in the States in the first place by starting Streamline, as there was never any intro by him on the earlier Akira Laserdisc and VHS release. Streamline brought over Kiki's Delivery Service and Laputa before Disney, uncut. Usually you're going to find Streamline was responsible for most early officially translated (quality) anime in the 80s and 90s. Upon looking further, it also appears Jerry Beck was involved with another company on the first uncut English version of Totoro as well, with a VHS and Laserdisc release. Really you can thank Jerry Beck for a lot of things, like overseeing the DVD releases of all of the early Warner Bros. releases for the Golden Collection uncut as well as the uncut Droopy set. Just the guy is not really a self marketer nor a mogul like Lasseter but a lover of cartoons and I always appreciate when I see his name popping up. Ugh, Lasseter. Fuck that guy.

Yeah that blanket statement is not true at all. Sure there's some like that out there, but they sound exhausting to be friends with. Besides, none of the other characters in the game were inconsistent like Kenny. Only problem is the dude happens to be in every episode of the game.

Ah I guess I just didn't want to speak so aggressively, but I was kind of a jerk to him in the attic but did not choose to hit him with the statue head.

If only Luigi's Mansion played this way.

:tup: Wow, other people whom I agree with about Up! I usually try to keep my opinions about Up to myself as people tend to eat me alive when I criticize that atrocious movie, but spot on Osmosisch. Ratatouille is maybe the only Pixar movie I actually love, but I suppose you'd also have to like slapsick stuff even though the underlying story is basically about how difficult it is to be an artist. But I'm not really going to defend it that much because in general I don't have an amazing amount of respect for Pixar and American animated movies all tend to share the same problems that don't allow the medium to be taken seriously in this country in the first place. There are a bunch of other animated movies, shorts, shows etc. that I could defend and mean it 100%. I'm pretty much done with every seeing the standard American animated movie ever again at this point. I dragged myself to Brave because Steve Purcell was the co-director, but anything I love in Steve Purcell's work was not really anywhere to be found in that movie. Wouldn't sell toys, I'm sure. Action figure prices are rising these days and John Lasseter's collection is waning. I'm sure he also needs a few more Hawaiian shirts.

I guess that's it, the only moment I opposed him was with Larry yet treated him as nice as I could about his family woes the next episode. I definitely agree, it would have been nice to call him on how unfair he was acting for just one event. I guess it makes sense because The battery puzzle was definitely the most embarrassing. I am really not sure why there is a woman who knew how to handle a gun but could not grasp the concept of batteries, but I just tried not to dwell on it too long.

Are you scanning these with just black and white settings because they look kind of digitally eaten at? I'd recommend scanning them in grayscale and probably in no more than 600 dpi (or maybe just 300 dpi since the paper size doesn't sound too big), then just playing with the levels until you get clear blacks and whites and cleaning up any stray spots bit by bit. Maybe that's of some help?

Hmmm, just finished all episodes. It's my duty to do this game sooner than later. I just came off the high of finally finishing Tales of Monkey Island last month, which is just about as traditional as it gets, and I absolutely loved that game. There were a few problems, but ToMI achieved some great escapism that I haven't gotten to experience in years and added a major amount of tension and empathy that I don't feel has existed in that series ever was added in by the Telltale gurus, especially the amazing subtle work that all turned out to be Jake . So on that, I guess I feel a little bit strange that I feel somewhat mixed about The Walking Dead after all of this acclaim. I mean technically it is Telltale's best adventure so far, it's beautiful, the animation is great, the dialogue is top notch and realistic, the character design is lovely, the setting is well fleshed out (nagging asset reuse did not happen here like previous Telltale adventures), the choices are inventive, the gameplay is incredibly fluid, and it is thankfully not Heavy Rain at all. I have played a lot of adventure games and I'm of the mind that the genre is not a problem, but that it's really tough to do correctly. I can definitely tell the greatest accomplishment of The Walking Dead is getting non adventure players to not just play Dragon's Lair with hammy writing (Yep, sorry David Cage) to get them through the game and not just give up. I'm kind of thinking about what was off for me still as I'm writing this... Maybe this is part of it? I think a lot of people think adventure game playing at it's core is just doing idiotic things until something works, but that's just not true in well designed games. I was actually very happy to find the traditional adventure game sequences in this game, as I was under the impression they would mostly be abandoned. I'm not sure why some silly puzzles still existed when the fluff was stripped away though. As mentioned earlier in this thread, getting Carly to understand the concept of batteries or getting Kenny to move an inch to get some maps by giving alcohol to an alcoholic just seem like classic problem puzzles that make people not enjoy adventure games. Most of episode five seemed really broken because I know that Lee That said, I'm glad those are pretty much the only bad puzzles. Even though I do sometimes like the inventory crazed stuff, I mostly like when adventures strip down to the core of what it would really be like to solve predicaments in real life, like a stick has many uses and many things do not require one to use an object but instead their body or dialogue. This is where Walking Dead is amazing, not really the easy peasy QTEs and fast button mashing sequences stringing them together. Those parts are just eating candy and exist for fun, the real meat in this game is still the open sections, puzzle solving, and exploration in my opinion. I get a sort of Discworld Noir vibe where I feel like I was playing a character who got shit done with the little he had and his thoughts. I guess then what must have left me somewhat cold on parts just being the characters and plot. Lee and Clementine were wonderful, I'm so glad the game exists without the baggage of the comic and show, not one complaint about those two there. So happy to play a protagonist like Lee even though you can sort of mess with his attitude depending how you want. But Kenny was just a mess, I played the game straight through in about a week and I really still could not keep track of his attitude towards me from one episode to the next. It seemed like he would focus on strange things to hate me for or act like I've never done a thing for him even though on so many occasions I helped the guy. He just seemed like a character without much going on narrative wise after Ep. 3 and just became a nuisance. I didn't really warm up to anyone else except for Doug and Molly, who only appeared briefly. Completely missed Molly's backstory as I've found out, so I guess I'll try that again on my next playthrough where I suppose I will play the biggest asshole ever. But really the side characters aren't a big deal, I guess what took me out of the narrative the most was I don't know, maybe part of my issue is I really just don't care for zombie stuff. I've never really been interested in zombie fantasies even before it blew up as a mainstream media extravaganza in the last 8 years. And I'm not trying to be too cool or above it in somewhat because it's popular, because when the stuff was the typical B-movie VHS rental standard my friends and I would waste away weekend nights with, I still felt bored with zombies. I love Danny Boyle as a director but 28 Days Later is kind of a snooze fest for me, even though I know everyone else loves it. Were it not for the against genre casting of Lee and Clementine, The Walking Dead would have just been an extreme chore for me. Anyway, there's a few Telltale series I have skipped but after this, I can't wait to see what their next series is like. I guess it would be Fables? EDIT: Oh yeah, have to specifically name two great things about the game. The facial animation was amazing. Coming off the great mocapped facial stuff in Enslaved and then playing Walking Dead and seeing the same exact kind of nuance made me happy it was by animators. It really is all just execution and I loved all of those character moments and responses carried out by only an expression or glance. Facial animation is one of those things you only tend to notice when it's going astray, but here I just amazed when I started to pick up on all of the subtleties. The other thing is just the character moment with Lee cutting Clementine's hair. Just brilliant. Please give me more of those sequences in adventure games or really any kind of game with a story. The small stuff always counts.

Wonder if my really shitty 30 second flash cartoon that I uploaded there about 6 years ago where Luigi does cocaine will be gone... Meh.

Might just do that thing that cats do where they purposefully fall over in disgust of the restrictions of people clothes.

Our cat had a cone on it's head for a while when it had to get declawed (against declawing but his it had some weird fungus that would not go away), but could not figure it out. He tended to get all disoriented and fall backwards when standing up and we could never stop laughing. He's fine now, but he was like a strange gnome. I think your cat will do well, my fiancee (hey I can say that now, sounds weird) is a vet tech and animals missing a leg tend to get a lot of love and attention and they tend to have the motor skills to make up for it. I'm gonna say "FI-ANTS" like in Raising Arizona from now on.