syntheticgerbil

Goodness, I like Michel Gondry and all, but boy do the commercials make it look atrocious. Guess it is...

Oh wow, I guess I didn't think Ridley Scott was actually doing this movie. I remember him talking about making an Alien prequel and concentrating on the derelict ship, but he was also talking about a Monopoly movie which doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon.

Yeah, I guess I was just hoping this time around someone would have gone through all the scenes with the alien that were composited and masked out all frames with the alien to desaturate the green. This is probably incredibly labor intensive to get right and also not be just as distracting. That in addition to Alien 3 not being the most loved, I guess it makes sense no one is going to spend that kind of time digitally fixing it for home video.

Haha, Kingz, for whatever reason your card captures what I imagine Norway to be like. I propose it is probably entirely accurate. Good thing you scanned it ahead of time!

There was just a ton of bad green screen and terrible cut out footage of the alien that I found really distracting. Nearly every shot of the alien that was superimposed had green reflections all over its body, completely separating it from the shot it was composited in. I mean I figure that's fine for 1990 and VHS, but I have no idea why there was no work taken upon the film restoration team to fix what they could of the alien (if they didn't already try). I was hoping Alien 3 would at least be spruced up more for the blu-ray release because all of the flaws from the previous DVD release would just become more obvious than ever.

Does anyone like Plaid? Can you give me a guide of what to listen to to get into them or maybe rank releases best to worst? The Tekkon Kinkreet soundtrack is my main exposure, which is brilliant: V5r-pBd8fTE The only other thing I know of is a Alison Goldfrapp collaboration long ago that was pretty bad. They also remixed the first Goldfrapp very first single which was also pretty bad.

Wait, is it different again on the new Blu-ray release or do you mean the previous DVD release for the Quadrilogy?

Rotoscoping can start looking nasty after a while anyway, especially as you add more frames. The route they went was fine by me. I also appreciate all of the faces are stylized (though not loudly) to avoid the ol' uncanny valley.

Kirby's Super Star Ultra completely done. That was incredibly jam packed for a Kirby game. I had played the original long ago on an emulator but didn't get too far since emulators sucked on 486s. Maybe originally made it to the start of The Great Cave Offensive? I really like the idea of a bunch of mini adventures in one game, I don't think too many other games have played with this idea. The new content seems to be a massive amount of boss rush stuff and a few minor level additions. I'm not complaining either way though, but I imagine those who played the original Super Star might not be that pleased. I also don't think I've played a DS game so far with this many prerendered cutscenes. Insecticide seemed to have a lot but still not this much.

I generally hate webcomics (except I guess I'll have to check out the new TenNapel one), but I want to say any references to Rex the Runt ever in anything are amazing.

I read the comic afterwards. I prefer the movie much more, but the comic lets things breath and has more story going on that couldn't possibly be crammed in two hours. They definitely did do some fake outs with the spoiler you mentioned though.

Yes you, Toblix.

I was finally able to get a hold of the Russian copy of Samorost 2 recently and the game is now complete. Very short and sweet. Took less than an hour. I guess I really don't need to be spending a ton of time on games anyway right now, but I wanted a little bit more. Still great, and I have the tiny art booklet. Woohoo!

Strange. While that sucks, I've only had two import games on the list for the regular list, that Tingle game from Europe and then Tingle's Balloon Fight from Japan. Europe didn't get the second Tingle game. I was really hoping everyone would follow Sony's lead this time, who for the first time ever is not region locking their released games, which is super convenient. Maybe importing DS games from the United States is very cheap these days with the crap value of the dollar, so they are looking to put an end to that?

Didn't you say you had already finished this game?

Wait, are you guys sure the whole thing is region locked or is it just the DSi downloadable content?

I watched Tekkon Kinkreet again. I think it's still my favorite animated film ever. Too much stuff I relate too in terms of characters and it's so beautiful and realized. The animation is wonderful and the music is so perfect. It almost makes me want to get into Plaid and buy all their albums. Maybe I should bug everyone about them in the music thread? The really strange thing is it seems like all the Japanese workers in the extras didn't exactly get the tone or emotion of the film (it was directed by an American who had moved to Japan and had been working at the production company over 12 years). It's similar enough to the original comic, but the pacing is very different. I only wish one day I can be a part of a creation of that caliber.

But that will all cost way more and isn't exactly necessary, specifically for Photoshop and beginner 3D, coming from someone who recommended about half your specs and uses it for the same regularly (except I do have a quad core, but did have a duo core iMac for a while with even worse specs that did get the job done at least in Adobe programs without too much lag). But looking through the original post, she didn't seem to say cost is an issue, so you're probably right.

I had an Asus motherboard on my old desktop that worked very nicely if that helps the Asus recommendation. I've heard good things about their laptops.

Is that James Pond? I know nothing about James Pond.

Haha, yeah I didn't want to say anything about the art in Kyrandia 3 earlier, because it definitely got worse. It's still super difficult to not have prerendered 3D and digitally painted or traditional work not clash, it definitely wasn't easy in 1994. I haven't played Kyrandia 3 in a while but I remember some of the backgrounds being nice despite all being 3D. I know the 3D cutscenes are used somewhat sparingly besides these laughably long ones that serve no purpose in these caves later on that have almost zero tie to the game and seem to be showing off. They just come off as horrible tech demos of fucked up cameras going around erratic planets and half baked rollercoasters rather than anything special. I remember a review loving them though.They also ruined a rather nice dragon by trying to recreate it in polygons. The most I can say for prerendered 3D of the 90s is that it's at least not the 320x240 real time 3D stuff. A lot of those games with those sorts of setups (like Virtua Fighter) become borderline unplayable for me now. Too much possibly movement crammed into too little space.

I really hate Guy with Glasses, but that's not really the point. I guess I was more annoyed with the amateur angry game reviewers or guys with a shtick that pop up on Youtube more than the professional guys, even though they can just be as grating. I lump somewhat amateur looking game sites with similar reviews in the same category. I guess that's all pretty unclear. Yahtzee also wore himself pretty thin as well to the point where I could almost feel he did like a game but had to instead find insignificant points to bash anyway it just for his audience. Overall though, I don't see the point of everyone being continuously snarky or trying to do some stand up bit for everything in game journalism in the first place. I guess because we are all introverted men for the most part and that's what introverted men like/do best? Someone being sincere or not trying to generate a bunch of jokes is a breath of fresh air now. I don't even like the word snarky.

I use Newegg.com for everything but I don't know if that's convenient for people that live in Europe or if you need completely different power supplies. I'd guess you'd need at least a dual/duo core processor, 4 GB of Ram, and some kind of non on-board video card that maybe has one gig or half of RAM itself. I think any laptop that is bulked up with that stuff will have a larger screen by default just because the small ones can't fit much power. Maybe avoid Dell, Compaq, HP, or any other huge name since they come with a lot of preloaded software and junk you don't need constantly running or hard to remove (in my experience).

I did realize what I was in for but I didn't get that far into the video. It's like changing the radio station in your car briefly to some autotuned rap, turning up the volume, and bobbing your head in mockery for the laughs only to searching for something good to listen to (or silence).

I don't ever really want to play God of War. It kind of confirms how I've always felt, that God of War is just a jock's wet dream (with added bloodlust) realized in video game form with high production values and probably solid controls and pacing and all the like. To me, this is was most obviously reflected in the way David Jaffe gets upset or talks about all of his great internet battles and arguments in hindsight, but he had nothing to do with GoW 3, so I don't know what to think.