Trithemius

Daily Dinosaur Comics is brilliant, but don't forget the texty-popup-thing you get when you mouse-over the comic - they can add another wafer of comedy.

"Now, don't you feel pretty!"

KOTOR is not -that- graphically astounding. Might be good for some Star Wars shininess if that is what floats your boat. I am going to say that Rome: Total War is pretty nice in battle mode with everything cranked. I am biased though because I am a wargaming freak and get my jollies from watching my troops march around.

Sealab 2021 has its charms as well. I totally miss Adult Swim now I am back in this hemisphere and bereft of any pay television.

It was pretty hard to miss, I had thought.

Does anyone know who did the music for Syndicate Wars? It seems so familiar to me for some reason, but I haven't seen my copy of the game and its docs since my younger brother lent it to one of his little friends years and years and years ago.

Cheers! I wonder if this means that they created the music, or selected it or... whatever?

Oh.. maybe? I thought it might be a bit random for the Games Forum, I suppose people could move it if they agreed. Seemed safer to toss it in here than to put it in a "real" forum.

Shoot things, while in drag? :?

I hear now that the rents are much steeper...

Nope. If I had I would have been extremely happy, then feeling extremely sorry for myself.

I'm damn sure he did have a political agenda, I'm just not at all convinced it is the one you are saying. There are political meanings that can be extracted from Hero that are not propagandistic. (EDIT: I mean specifically that are not propagandistic on behalf of the current regime of the P.R.C.; not that the political message might be "propaganda", since one could argue that all political messages are this) If that's the way you feel, I'll certainly call it quits. No point in continuing something that's stopped being interesting. Adventure-capitalism makes for fun games, I wish someone would make some more of them though.

It is interesting. The most interesting thing about it is that it was written by a film-maker from Hong Kong - someone who is obviously utterly without a political agenda. You seem to be really simplifying this issue. It would be impossible to make a movie about the character of Qin Shi Huang and his role in the formation of China without discussing his politics; obviously if you view the formation of China as a positive thing (and, I may be going out on a limb here, but I expect that a lot of Chinese people might see it that way) then you are going to have to deal with the trick of talking about authoritarian models of governance in a positive way. The same is true if you look at the role of any autocrat in national "creation myths". It doesn't mean you endorse authoritarian rule. Can you conceive of how this story could possibly have been done without making the actions of Qin Shi Huang positive?

You don't need to make people sympathise with him, Qin Shi Huang has been mythologised as the founder of the nation for centuries. It's like the Founding Fathers in the USA, except that it happened about two millenium earlier. There has been discourse about the character of Qin Shi Huang for a long time before Hero, and it seems fairly likely that it will continue afterwards.

Sorry I thought you said "communism". If you really want to compare 20th-century CE political systems to 3rd-century BCE political systems I would be inclined to suggest that the enthusiastic nationalism of the National Socialists has more in common with Qin Shi Huang's attempts to create a unified state in what we like to think of as China. I like red, ergo I am a slavish commie? Damn, I guess you got me, sir. Is it utterly impossible that a director might want to talk about the historical events that led to the foundation of the culture of the society in which he lives without having to indirectly sanction the authoritarian politics that prevail there now? Should Yimou have made Qin Shi Huang a centuries-too-early Chinese Benjamin Franklin or something? How the hell do you portray the character of the guy who was the first emperor of China without talking about the themes of authority? FFS, isn't that "ding-dang obvious". -- ... It's dealing with the mythologised history of the guy who unified China. You are away of the contention about Qin Shi Huang in Chinese historiography right? Don't even get me fucking started about Braveheart... N.B. Condensed this to one post to stop people moaning.

House of Flying Daggers was more "typical" of the genre's obsession with absolute tragedy. The writers do the same type of contortions to get a miserable ending that their peers in Hollywood undergo in order to make a film end happily. All this being said though, I found Hero much more compelling and entertaining, in terms of basically everything. I fucking liked all the music and colour symbolism, and question the political education of anyone who considered it some kind of pro-Communist propaganda - its clearly about nationalism not international revolutionary socialism. I liked Garden State and The Life Aquatic. Didn't see any of the ersatz history movies that have been turning up a lot, and avoided Constantine so as to avoid fanboy-ish frothing.

Not that that was a crushing disappointment or anything...

And you can still get to all the old Alpha Centauri stuff. Good. Now if only someone would let them have a crack at a remake of that.

Amen. :\

Not a Magical Adventures In Space fan huh? I quite like Jeffrey Rowland's other thing, Overcompensating, too. The Perry Bible Fellowship is neat, as well as being somewhat disturbing, from time to time. I think everything else I read was already mentioned.

If it makes it cheaper, I'm totally okay with it. I get complaints about hauling all my boxes around already...

Only problem with Dog is they'd have to seriously mess about with what is and what is not throwable. I know nothing about the technical side of gaming (or indeed much of anything) but this seems like it could be a bother. Still, HL2: Dog - Xtreme Throwing Shit Around wouldn't make me unhappy.

I wonder what ESRB rating that is worth...

Because its fucking true?

There are? I thought a lot of the objections were about his statism, not his conservatism? Uh. Shit. My polsci is showing again.