miffy495

I played a bunch of Mighty Flip Champs when it came out, but like a lot of puzzle-platformers I got frustrated about half way through. My brain just isn't good at wrapping itself around these things, so why I keep buying them I'm not sure. That said, what I did play I enjoyed quite a lot, and if you're looking for something new to download and try on your 3DS, I would recommend it. It's actually the only Way Forward game that I've played, so I can't say how it compares to their other stuff, but it's good.

Bring that sucker back! For a while there, I really liked what they were doing with it (the ArtStyle games, Mario vs Donkey Kong, Mighty Flip Champs, etc) but then it just kind of fell into mediocrity and having to wade through the crap to find the good games became too much effort. If you've got some gems to share, that's what the thread is for. I'm hoping that with the 3DS eShop opening, there will be another run of good stuff for a while before they've got the major stuff out of the way and it slows again (see also: Virtual Console and Wiiware. A lot of great releases out the gate followed by years of "meh").

What code is this? I think I missed something in my efforts to avoid spoilers.

They are really good. I actually wanted to play Wow really bad for a long time just because of that fucking story, but from what I've seen the quality didn't carry so I kept on ignoring the game.

Thread seems to have died after the HL1 discussion ended (makes sense, given that all the other games that I played have been released within this forum's lifetime and talked to death), but I wanted to give some closure here. That's right, over the past week I've replayed Portal 1 and 2, and have thus completed all of the single player games in the Half Life universe in the span of just over a month. I really can't add much about Portal that hasn't been said a million times in the thread for that game, but there are two things I want to say. First off, it was a shock to hear how robotic GladOS was at the beginning of Portal 1. It was a natural progression while it happened, but man did they do a lot to humanize her over the games. My mind had fooled me into thinking she was always like that, but no. At the start of the series, she really was just a cold robot. Second, an even bigger shock was seeing a loading screen in Portal 2. After a month of my primary gaming experience being Valve's "pop up the word loading, no separate screens ever" model, what the fuck Portal 2? That bothered me a bit when playing it the first time, but this time it stood out even more and made me really bummed that they decided to go that route. A real pity, given how damn good everything else about that game is. ...and that's it. I think I may try The Witcher now, given how much everyone has been talking about it lately and that I have the game sitting on my Steam list unplayed. I'm honestly a little sad because I know that the next shooter I play will almost certainly be inferior to what I have been playing. That's mildly depressing knowledge to have.

Ah, Low Frequency. Gotcha. Yeah, after all the training I've had for actually running and maintaining the machines themselves, most of the "not-an-actual-35mm-projector" stuff I've had to learn on the fly over the last several years, meaning I can run it and fix it but don't always know the proper names. A little scary, since I know the digital stuff way better than either of the other two projectionists here and am having to train a new person in things which I've only self-taught before and have had no formal instruction with. I just like to hover and ask questions whenever my boss would call in technicians for this huge expensive thing that he is pretty scared of (he's great at the mechanical stuff, but if it isn't loud and clanky, he has no confidence running or fixing it) to the point that I've absorbed enough from them to be able to troubleshoot and fix things myself. I'm sure there will be occasions where some new problem that I haven't seen before will crop up, but the technicians like me now and I have their phone numbers, so good enough to get by. As for teaching it? I'm making up a reference sheet for the new girl now with basic procedural stuff on it and troubleshooting details where necessary, but I'm having difficulty not just doing a brain dump and saying "there, now you have as much information as I do. Let's work this out together." I've hit 3 pages for setting up channels on the projector, starting up a show, and shutting down a show. That seems like overkill given how simple it is in practice, but I'm the kind of guy who likes to overexplain.

Six channels if you include the sub woofer? We're an exceptionally old place (75th birthday last year and all) and are set up with front right, front left, front center, back right, and back left, as well as a sub woofer for bass. Nothing more than that, if you were expecting more? Sort of? I'll be a public face for the theatre as he will no longer be there to be the principle business hours guy to deal with clients and I am the only manager who works here full time. This means that pretty much everyone will be dealing with me in order to get their shows looking right. At the same time, I'm not going to be able to take over doing any kind of programming as I'll be going back to school in the fall and starting my practicum at an elementary school as early as January, leaving no time for the 70 hour work week that programming this place is. So yes and no. Yes, I've been passed the torch as "This is the guy to talk to at the theatre, and the person who will be running whatever events you wish to have here," but no on the programming side. I'll be keeping up full time hours in the evening along with school as long as my sanity permits, but can't take any daytime hours. As the print services business is slowly being gutted and reduced to a skeleton crew, it is currently looking likely that a coworker who is a projectionist for 2 shifts a week here right now and works at a print lab on weekdays will be leaving the print services gig and taking over programming here. We'll essentially be splitting the duties of the guy who left with a smaller chunk going to me so that I can go to school, with me being the representation and full time projection, him being the behind the scenes and full time programming. Bummer that you had to leave your job, but these are the two bits that stood out to me. Major congrats, man!

Keep in mind, my experiences are in Canada, and the depressing stories I've heard are from the Cineplex chain, so who knows what it's like for a smaller UK chain of theatres. I have no reason to suspect that it's better, but also would be unjustified in making any statements about them. EDIT: Also, to be clear, our test reel does happen to have a tone track on it, so there is a constant sound coming at even levels from all 5 channels when it is used. If something sounds off, we calibrate for that. Last theatre I worked at just had picture though, no sound, so I have no idea what most places would be equipped with.

You're thinking of Will Wright: Ok, so it's not him with his battlebots robot, but I couldn't find any pictures of the two of them together, only photos of Wright and photos that said "this is Wright's robot"...

A "screen check" is probably what I described, with someone going in periodically to keep an eye on things. If you know your theatre well (which the kids they have running things obviously do not) you'd be surprised how attuned you can be to something like that. You may not pick up on it right away, or attribute the issue to being with the print rather than the speakers, but by the time you've shown more than one movie it should be obvious that something is up. Software-wise, we'd be talking about digital projection, which is not something my theatre is up to speed on (we have a $75,000 1080p digital projector, a J-30 deck, and a blu ray player. The projector is really good, but if we're going to start showing regular "digital format" shows, we'd need to spring the $16,000 or so that one of those HDD racks the big theatres show movies from have) but we do have a colour bar & tone test tape for the J-30 and an equivalent disc for the Blu Ray player. These we had specially made though, so your theatre may not have them. As for a calibration reel, there is probably a loop of film in the booth that is used when calibrating a newly installed bulb (it helps to ensure balanced light levels across the screen) but these are hardly standardized, and may or may not include any kind of tone for testing out your sound. It really depends if your film was on 35mm or a digital format, and even then there is no set way to do it. It's all down to what your projection staff (in this case unfortunately, none) take the initiative to get made and test with regularly. To give you the brief and sort of sad answer to your question; no, there is no standard that theatres use to test their equipment with. It's just down to having capable staff who take care of their shit. Not that I know of. Any time that photos stretch the forum out horizontally for me it irritates, whether they're from a game or not.

That sounds like the entire part of the game I would be interested in. Bummer you have to beat it first. Maybe I'll pick it up if it gets cheap and plough through it in a weekend so I can see the cool stuff at the end.

And it's gonna be in OoT 3DS as well! Whoo!

I'm not sure what you mean by checks? If you have a competent projectionist in house, they'll peek into the theatre every 20 minutes or so (about when the reel changes happen, if you're using a platter projection system rather than a dual projector reel-to-reel setup [which would require the projectionist never leave the booth at all]) to ensure that nothing has changed, presentation-wise, when the reel change occurred. This can be anything from slight changes in sound to focus drift (the heat from the bulb causing mild expansion in the lens and requiring a slight adjustment to the focus) to a splice being out of frame and having to fix that ASAP. If you mean more general maintenance stuff, ideally the very first show that something changes your projectionist should be aware, but parts can be tough to come by and expensive to ship, so actually fixing something (even something as noticeable as a blown speaker, I speak from experience) can take a week or so. If there is something that could really effect enjoyment of a show, I'm sure to warn people when they buy their tickets about it and remind them that we have a "if you want/need to leave in the first half hour, full refund" policy so that they know going in. Of course, as my theatre is only one screen, we only have two employees on at a time so the projectionist also runs the box office. I have the opportunity to talk to everyone on their way in. If I have something that needs my attention and I can't be there, I do my best to make sure that the lobby person will notify people as well though. On the other hand, it's my experience that most chain theatres have ONE competent-to-good projectionist who is there during business hours to deal with print traffic and keeping the projectors running correctly, and then a few kids with the most bare-bones training they could have (they can start a movie without setting it on fire) to actually run the shows during the evenings. They would not be doing the things that I was talking about, and would likely not notice or bring it to the actual projectionist's attention if something were wrong. Unfortunately, this model is much cheaper for the chains than making sure that there's a real projectionist on duty at all times so it's far more likely to be the case. I'd wager that that is the main problem with the theatre you were talking about. The "projectionist" on duty doesn't know what they're doing, and the real projectionist probably hasn't been informed and, as they aren't there when the show is playing to see for themselves, doesn't know.

The phrase used was "chicks." I see only one chick there. Please supply chicks in greater quantities.

I actually finished every single side quest in Majora, but the boss of the last temple was such a pain that I had to go back 5 years later to actually see the end of that game. Agreed that a 3D-ified remake of Majora would be a fantastic thing to do though. I want to replay that game in the worst way, and trying to do so with a classic controller on the Wii, while fine, just doesn't quite feel right somehow.

I was on there for Microsoft, EA, and Ubisoft's press conferences during E3, but that was the only time I've been on there. I honestly don't know if there are ever regular chats that happen, I think you'd need to schedule something (like "hey, let's all talk while making fun of the E3 conferences") in order to have a group to talk to. Meh, not many people do, and everyone seems to use it in the way that you did. The actual meaning is "next-to-last", rather than just being a cooler way to say ultimate. I'm just a bit of a dick about stuff like that (see also: using "ignorant" to mean "stupid" or "mean", which is actually often more ignorant than whatever act the speaker is describing), though I try to be good natured about pointing it out. It's the repeat and habitual language offenders you need to look out for.

Don't go! We miss you!

Getting through a the first three cases of Traffic today (well, the first 2, as well as the DLC traffic case that comes with the PS3 version) was pretty neat. It's taking me a bit of time to wrap my head around the game, and a lot of restraint to not pound the reset button whenever I fuck up a question, but so far I really like the game. I also like that I haven't yet seen a case where there has been a pretty dead girl and I have to go through generic stuff. It's been abandoned car with missing owner, diplomat's car stolen, stripped for parts, and left in some dude's back yard, and hit and run with more than is on the surface. I've really enjoyed those, and am actually not really looking forward to getting to homicide as I suspect it will be more boilerplate stuff than I've seen so far. This game and I have very different interpretations of the term "doubt." In one interview, I had looked behind a picture frame on a photo of a missing man, and it had the name of a woman who was not his wife signed on it. I suspected from this that he had faked his death to be with her, and while interviewing his wife it was clear that she knew something, but I took things slowly to try and spare her feelings. When she said her husband often took business trips and looked a little sad about it, I guessed that she knew something was up, but didn't want to come straight out and accuse her of lying to me, so I decided that in that instance rather than saying "WHO'S NICOLE?!?" and yelling at her (also assuming that she knew more details about the affair than she necessarily does) I would have said something more like "and he ONLY goes for business?" to prompt her. That would be, to me, a "doubt" response. Instead, Cole yells at her "YOU KNOW WHERE HE WENT AND WHY, AND YOU'RE GOING TO TELL ME!" Which is more "asshole" than anything else. I'm starting to work this out, but it feels weird to respond to things the way he does. What a prick.

Actually, the penultimate Zelda game would be Phantom Hourglass, as it was the second-to-last one to come out. *gets back in language police patrol car and drives away*

The website to change your password without your PS3 has been down since I started checking, and still is. For the hell of it, I tried bringing my PS3 in to work the other night to use the wifi there and change my password/claim my free shit. That worked fine. Played about an hour of Dead Nation and thought it was ok, while also justifying my decision to not spend money on it earlier. Also downloaded my bonus LA Noire shit, which was cool, and grabbed LBP and MNR for PSP, which I haven't tried yet. Bummer that so much of their shit still seems broken even now that it's back up, but I guess you could be right that they're being swamped by users getting their free stuff.

Game Tycoon Gold Theme Game Blum? EDIT: I'm so sorry.

So now that the 'bargo is up, I can tell you that my theatre, on top of everything else, was named best theatre in Calgary for 2011 by Fast Forward magazine (a local arts & entertainment mag). This may not mean much to those outside the city, but it's a huge fucking deal if you live here. I represented the theatre at their party last night, and it was bloody surreal. Among the experiences I never expected to have in my life (let alone before I'm 25), talking with the mayor over cocktails at a gala party was probably one of the top 3. We only talked for a few minutes, but still. He was a phenomenally nice guy, and it makes me really happy that I voted for him now that I've met him. Also, I'm so damn pumped that, for the poster-city for Canadian Christian Conservatives, our mayor is a leftist muslim man who I'm now about 90% sure is a homosexual. Eat that, rednecks! The rest of the party was sort of a bummer, as I spent so much time fielding questions about what's going to happen now that my boss was leaving (this is also the reason he wanted me to go rather than him, as I'm going to be representing the theatre to our clients once he leaves and he thought I should make the connections). Weird evening. A lot of free drinks, a lot of not-so-fun conversations, but also a few meetings and talks that I'll be remembering for a long time.

I think I hear someone else laughing a little bit during the last 10 seconds or so. My brain cannot accept that as real. Bloody funny though.

Grabbed my games tonight. Dead Nation and a live-on-my-PS3-instead-of-the-disc copy of LittleBigPlanet for PS3, and LBP and ModNation for PSP. Only one that I'm honestly interested in is the portable LBP, but I enjoy a good kart racer, so I'm happy to give MNR a free shot.

No, that's fair. It's the vibe I got from your post, so I figured you didn't have a bunch of experience with them. Honestly, I've never thought of the Zelda games as RPGs and it's seemed really weird whenever people referred to them as such. Sure, you get more HP and attack power as you go through the game, but so does Kratos in God of War and nobody mistakes that for an RPG. It's a game about going through dungeons, solving puzzles, and occasionally fighting monsters that aren't that challenging but can sometimes overwhelm you. First and foremost, you're exploring the worlds and dungeons of each one and solving puzzles within them. I guess you do that in RPGs too, but the way that you do it is so different from where I'm sitting that comparing them has always felt daft. EDIT: Also, a word of warning. Nintendo games (no matter which ones) seem to start out thinking you're a complete idiot. If you get sick of games quickly, the heavy tutorialization of the first few hours of any first party Nintendo game will kill the fun for you. They usually pick up really well after a couple of hours and by the end become astounding (from my perspective, anyway), but prepare yourself for a painfully slow start.