Nachimir

I think the fact that it's apocalyptic and surreal Disney, rather than just apocalyptic and surreal, is the main hook it has.

I thought it was a drug reference, because kind of fits with the aesthetics...

Massive difference between being a twatty libertarian troll and not being one, too

This is what we're doing on the Friday: http://pixel-lab.co.uk/indiegamesarcade/2009/10/show-and-yell/ It'll be close to the expo and Brick Lane. There's only so much space, but shoot me a PM if you'd like to come along.

Well it's kids/teens TV, and the female presenters are usually perky, often petite, cute but not overtly sexual, and usually a bit cool. Visually, Faith is a pretty good fit.

(bump) finally got around to this because I want the time trials DLC, and it was only 8 quid from Play. A games lecturer I know described it as "controlling a Blue Peter presenter on ketamine trying to do a Royal Marines assault course", which I think is about right. On trying the campaign out for a couple of evenings, I'm 5 chapters through it and with n0wak. It's Rick Dangerous 3D :( The sheer amount of gotchas in the level design of this is atrocious. It turns it into a joyless trudge. In the first levels where you should be improving your skills and exploring a little, it has cops shoot at you a lot. It's like the game is saying "Are you ready? Huh? Yes? Ok then. BLAM! I shot you in the face you weren't ready for that. Okay try again. Ready? Go! OOHHHH! I PUNCHED YOU IN THE BALLS this time". On later levels this is only getting worse. I've had so little time to pause, practice and find out about any of the moves that I'm more than halfway through the game and only just able to string moves together competently. I'm determined to finish this before going on to the DLC. I actually enjoy the bits without cops for the most part, but it could have done with a better tutorial than "press this button and this button to do this once. Ok, next move!" and assuming you'll remember when you first need it three levels later.

Is that a site made by fools, or a parody site made by fools? It reads like a massive overextension of I LIEK MILK.

So people without insurance deserve to die penniless? Sure it's stupid not to have insurance, but proceeding from that with a libertarian stance helps nothing and noone. Also, since when are insurance companies anything but money grubbing immoral leeches? Who ever thought it would be a good idea to entrust healthcare to them? It's not just "bad", the American healthcare system is absolutely mental.

Edge Hub.

I love helicopters. They're pretty easy to fly once you get the hang of them (and the construction yard mission in Vice City with the remote control one is good training), it's just virtually impossible to aim the machine guns when you're off the ground. Hearing... ActionShakespeare? shout YES YES YES as I drove my truck in front of his machine guns was really funny, as was moving people down with one near the parked choppers. Patters, sorry for killing you over and over again during that race. It was pretty funny though

Tigsource put something up about it, many the indie developers I follow on twitter are mentioning it too. I donated. Possibly due to meeting him briefly, I deem Ed worth keeping alive.

Happy birthday Erkki

My workmate recorded this incredible cover of a song called Apollo: http://soundcloud.com/rjbirkin/apollo-2 Months later I'm still pretty bowled over by it.

Did anyone else notice how badly Batman is drawn in this one? His eyes are more than halfway up his head, and he appears to have bulbous silicon pec implants

Yeah, absolutely. The one with the 3 walls and exploding foam medal is surely impossible in that time. Might be lucky glitches rather than intentional exploitation though; either way I'd love to see how they're doing it. You can get lucky with AI to a certain extent. Sometimes the positions just line up the kills, and sometimes they don't. Hothouse with the method in that youtube video is a really good example. The sonic batarang is a sure thing once you've got how to use the instant takedown it can do, but everything after varies. Got to #16 today, but it was only because I managed the double batclaw takedown, the glide kick landed me close to the ladders, and the remaining two henchmen were at the bottom of the ladders together but one paused, so they came up one at a time. The same routine can easily get me shot instead.

A few notes on these: I completed all of them yesterday with some decent times, including the two DLC ones. They seem to revolve around making a plan and sticking to it, but once you have it down to a good one speed is basically affected by an AI lottery: they'll go where you want them to, but the speed varies. The top players have ridiculous times for the extreme ones, like 20 seconds. It makes it seem pretty obvious that they're using some kind of exploits, or are very skilled and get amazingly lucky in terms of AI placement. I couldn't find any really fast runs like that on youtube though. I watched youtube , and that's a really good method. The only exploit seems to be that henchmen will ignore batman if he ziplines right past them. He also gets very lucky in that his batclaw takes out two people at once (not visible in the video).I also didn't know that the sonic batarang has a brief moment on landing, before it triggers any collars, where it will take out the nearest henchman upon detonation (In the video, it's used to take out the high security prisoner, who's stood under the platform to the right of where he throws the batarang - if you do it too soon it'll take out the patrolling guy you can see moving under the walkway instead). Now I can actually do the initial section fast enough to take out the high security guy before the patrolling one gets anywhere near the ladder, but doing it that fast that seems to mess up the later half so the same method means your next glide kick plants you too far from the ladders. Best time is just over a minute, which put me at 37 on the table. Pretty happy with that since I seem to hover between 10,000 - 20,000 on most.

Another famous batman panel:

I found the Joker fight easy because you can lead the little exploding robots to gaggles of crooks then dodge away as they explode, flattening everyone. To that point, you can spam counter as much as you need to, and after that you get opportunities for ground takedowns. Wow, thanks. You're incredibly fluent; watching that emphasises just how reliant I still am on occasional panicked button mashing, which of course kills my combos. I'm also having trouble getting throws in, and only manage instant takedowns about 50% of the time I can do them.

Did anyone else find the first half of the final boss fight I'm now doing the challenge levels. After initially thinking "Fuck off!" to the extreme stealth ones, I tried them today and found that getting the medals on each is basically an awesome set of puzzles. I'm terrible at the combat challenges, though thanks to this from gamefaqs I'm actually figuring out combos and fight mechanics for the first time... ever (Always hated beat 'em ups).

It means that it'll be in Leeds on Oct 27th and 28th, and in London on the 30th and 31st. I'll be at both for all four days since I'm working on it.

Yeah, I hate completionist SF that tries to justify or explain everything with some bunk or other.

I'll second Transmetropolitan too. I didn't mention it because it's not really superhero like you mentioned, but it's by far my favorite comic. It's insane and brilliant. 100 Bullets was also a recent highlight, it finished this year after a decade long run and is an astounding piece of work on themes of American violence, racism, class and principles.

In a superhero vein, I really like Planetary by Warren Ellis. If you're after pure apocalypse and super beings, The Authority might be more up your street; Planetary is in the same world, just as violent and with characters no less brutal, but it finds a lot of time for beauty and whimsy. Also, the final issue comes out this year after a very long wait.

Thanks for the invite Thunderpeel, I wasn't being ignorant, but was feeding people and then, it turned out, being a shoulder to cry on for most of last night. Should be around next week.

It showed me that writers are interested in creating intelligent coverage of games, and that some gaming forums aren't full of 13 year olds.