twmac

Yeah, not a lot of people on here own Xbones so I imagine that there aren't many people who have played it. I am a bit strapped for cash at the moment but I will definitely be picking it up the next chance I get. I loved Limbo and from what a couple of my friends have been saying and your post I think I am going to love this game too. To add to that Limbo is hands down the best game I have shown non-gamers and got them to appreciate what games now are. Both my mother and sister were disappointed when I stopped playing.

I finally watched Ex Machina, Room, Legend, and Tangerine. Very late to the party. Legend - fun performance from Hardy does nothing to illuminate the Krays and fails to really delve into the impact they had on London. They were murderous, nasty people and the film never really goes there. Ex Machina - Liked it a lot, it was a Sci-Fi retelling of 'In the Company of Men' Room - Really like both performances in it and it was great to see Sean Bridger in a big film after his stellar performance in 'The Woman' Tangerine - My favourite of the lot. Reminded me of early Linklater stuff the central friendship is so awesomely convoluted but I do like that final scene as it gives you hope for them.

Thanks for the apologies - the omission stung for a bit. Edit: To make this post a bit more constructive - Phill I just read your piece and it is my favourite of the lot. The form of emails makes the whole thing hilarious and very familiar to my previous work environments. That said there are some mistakes in there that broke the flow a little: In the first email there are some spelling mistakes: My last palce didn’t even have a cleaner (!) so this makes a wonderful change Apologies in advance for any stupid questions I might have, and if you ened anything from me just let me know! Kind regards, I know that spelling and errors become a part of the theme later but these seemed incongruant with the ones later. Also this part: Hey Pete, I think what Amy means is that it’s pretty important you find that stapler. We’ll have a look today but if we can’t find it, you should really start wracking your brains. Is this not meant to be 'Todd' written here and not 'Amy'? There is a missing word in the final email from Jess but I took that as being part of her personality. Anyway, the format worked really well, it was a dark comedy and then it veered into 'Raw Shark Texts' territory. Very fun read.

Jesus, I didn't realise my entry was that bad/bland that everyone forgot it

Ouch dude, ouch: Space Boss by twmac

Perfect - shame we can't do an idle thumbs book club episode where they have read each of the pieces and then comment on them.

Pretty much everything you describe here is exactly why I liked Oxenfree. It was like the first time I watched "The Mexican" and laughed because they talk all over each other in that film rather than doing the normal thing of delivering lines and waiting for responses. People do that in real life all the time and it is refreshing to see it in a game.

To be honest - that sentence only went in there after a friend read it and asked what the dad was talking about at the end. April 25th is such an important part of Portuguese history that I forget that a lot of people are not going to have a clue as to the significance of the date. It is loosely based on a story my History Teacher told me, she was in her twenties at the time and decided she didn't want to teach class on that day, instead she went and had a picnic on a hill and read a book. When she came back the whole of Portugal had changed. By putting the date in there it allows for people to look it up if they so wish. Also, was worried about the two big 'twists' at the end. It seems like you already understood the internal tension of the main character but some people totally missed the bit where the father talks to the protagonist and calls them by name for the first time. Also, I got drunk and tweeted about the story and wrote 'requited', instead of 'unrequited' then read it the next day and high fived my formerly drunk self. Unrequited has been done to death.

So, I signed up for Medium to comment on another article, so figured I might as well put my 'Space Boss' up there: https://medium.com/@twmac/space-boss-1f4dcb28ef25#.4nsm72fyo Few spoilers: Anyway, that was a lot of fun, I look forward to the next one! I will say that the complaint about threads getting overwhelmed and overwhelming is going to be a valid one if we keep doing more of these and keep as part of the same original post. If we keep this up for 5-6 months, might be worth seeing if we can get our own sub-forum.

Could have done with being longer. The only thing I didn't like was the jarring use of grunge. I am gathering that this is set in a period when space flight across galaxies, and complex AI exists, so I don't think the grunge style would have survived. Mainly because it isn't particularly distinct (a lot of hipster dress wear and skater clothes could be mistaken for it), I can totally buy that Nirvana would still be knocking around but not the clothes.

Thanks for the spoiler note. I will re-read it again now that I am a bit more sober too and make sure I standby what I said.

Fuck it, just do it. I am enjoying reading everything that has come out so far.

Fuuuck, what was that about? My criticisms are mainly about how it is written and not the content itself (which I liked): The blurring of tenses in a couple of places is a bit jarring as I was trying to figure out whether this was in the past or happening at that point in time - this might be intentional but if so make that clearer that you are fucking with the reader. The use of 'but' at the beginning of a sentence is something that got beaten out of me from an early age. It can be effective in communicating the maturity/age of the narrator but when you have a bit of a mind fuck going on, it might be better to use "However" instead. The formatting is lovely but as you are flip flopping around it might be easier to read if you make it clear when it is that the character is reading the note and when stuff is just happening to them. Anyway, liked it a lot but would just format and adjust a little tighter.

I am working on something but am checking things like censorship in 1970's Portugal and immigration rules.

Okay, you can still make him whiney, I just didn't find that he was justified until the second character talked about how she would never have been able to carry it anymore.

Hhahah, I really like those thought process pages! I almost went with something about how banal being the Space Boss was - like middle management for justice type thing. Being the Space Boss meant a lot of paper work while the real adventurers were off doing cool stuff.

Contextualise it in the beginning, maybe give 'Jerem' a little bit more time to breathe as your only named character. I found him whiny in the first part and I didn't realise why until the second part (the bag was heavy, the long windy stair case really was long and windy). You might not need to write much more but it might help to give more of a sense of fatigue, lengthening sentences in which Jeremy has to do anything usually help as it give the reader a sense of the duress he is under.

I liked it, it reminds me of the short stories Roald Dahl used to write. I don't get what the text from the print out is supposed to mean, nor do I understand why the last line would be obvious but there is a really good use of the limited number of words to provide a whole load of information. My only suggestion might be to give a bit more context for Jeremy's exertion at the beginning - he came off as whiny until I full realised how much weight he was carrying in the second part of the story.

I fucking hated Remember Me, I still haven't finished it because everything about it made me want to kill myself. A friend insisted that it was awesome so tried to play it three times and it just reminded me of a worse version of the Aeon Flux game. The memory rejigging was the only thing even remotely entertaining. Glad that other people got a kick out of it and you also nailed why I hated the combat (I do not enjoy Rhythms games). Absolutely agree that Life is Strange was a great address to all of the problems of Remember Me.

Was racking my brain for something on this and coming up blank. Off to listen to "Space Boss" by T-Rex.

As a modifier - if you are translating from a foreign languge (I am assuming that most will be English) then use direct translation instead of the English equivalent. I speak Portuguese and I love that there is an idiomatic term 'You lie with as many teeth as you have in your mouth'. But Turkish has it beat with the fact that teenager directly translates as 'Crazy Blood'. I like the idea of building a whole story around crazy bloods and other idiomatic language.

I am totally down for this and I am very much up for the modifiers - I have a very speific style so anything that breaks me from my heavy reliance on dialogue would be more than welcome. Really excited about this, especially as I have tons of free time at the moment - I only need to do a work out, wash the dishes and cook dinner at the moment.

Sorry, I wrote that wrong (what I meant is that Zootopia and Inside Out are on my list to see - that was hastily put together). I did dig through the comments and those seem like fair criticisms of the film, I actually liked that we see Clooney as a kid, full of wonder and excitement for the world before he gets left behind. X-Men Apocalypse was pretty terrible - there were loads of scenes of people just floating in mid air doing nothing. It was supposed to be epic but it was shot poorly. Also, Magneto's back story was cool in 2000 but has gone the way of Batman's parents being shot. Everyone knows it, please stop showing it over and over again.

FFVIII was awful (except the card game, which is the best thing in the game even though the AI cheats). I am giving up on Valkyria Chronicles II, I was absolutely loving it until I got to this one level where I realised a bunch of my soldiers were too under levelled to take on the challenge. I was going to go back to get them upgraded but came head first into the arbitrary assignment of credits (there are different gradiants of credits in each mission and I haven't unravelled how to guarantee that my Scouts will get the credtis they need to become elite snipers) and realised that I was going to have to play certain missions over and over again until they unlocked them (or not). It sucked all the fun out of the game and I will not be picking it up again, shame as I made it about three quarters of the way through the game and played it for about 40 hours.

I finally got round to watching Tomorrowland and I seem to recall it getting quite a few negative reviews. I don't really understand why, it is probably one of the strongest kids films I have watched in quite some time (Inside Out and Zootopia are on the list). The plot kind of reminded me a little of the premise to Bioshock but kept fairly clean, Clooney does Clooney and is out shone by the kid actors who do a great job. Has any one seen it? Would be curious if it is just that I recently watched both X-Men Apocalypse and Batman vs Superman and now my standards have been sufficiently lowered.