twmac

Just got this on Xbox One - three years after this thread. I can see what Toblix means by slightly wonky platforming. The difficulty does seem to be increasing but I don't want it to. This is a game that I am enjoying picking up on a hangover Sunday and playing through a few levels while some cheerily narrates away over the top. Totally get what Vimes means about getting Chris and Laura to collaborate more too. Not the best game but it the bursting optimism is utterly charming.

I think both posts on GOTY are interesting. Incidentally, if you are interested in critics revelling in GOTY discussion just for the sake of it Giant Bomb is a good/bad place to start with their 6 hour epic debates on the top ten games of the year. I have not once agreed with their top five but it is brilliant fun to hear people debating subjective 'facts'. As for the mechanically brilliant but thematically troubling, Where does GTA V factor into this? It is rubbish to play but everyone seems to ignore the weak aiming, shitty driving and boring missions and still say it is fantastic.

In reverse fortunes, my real name has replaced a bunch of actually famous people at the top of my google search due to some people on Youtube taking the piss out of me on their reasonably famous channel.

So, Sean and Danielle talked about the PS4 version of this and I kind of just dismissed it. The Xbox One version came out about 2 months ago and I have been playing it a lot. Like, more than most other games. For someone who doesn't really understand Baseball, it was a really interesting learning curve with me having to figure out what the point of bunting, stealing and pitching into different points was all about. I lost 7 of my first 8 games I played and then, slowly but surely, things slotted into place. Reading pitches started to come more naturally and as a result looking for ways to fool batters became easier and, as result my batting improved. The great part is that the difficulty is on a sliding scale and can be adjusted at any time. I started at an EGO setting of 15 (that is pretty easy) but have been gradually increasing it and am now at 35. On my second medium sized season I am undefeated but I keeping cranking it up by a couple of points every game and it has been a truly engaging experience. This is made more so by the customisation as I can now attribute personalities to each of the players and the stats help give me an understanding of what the film 'Moneyball' was all about. I have some great hitters but they would be nothing without the guys who consistently make it to first and second base.

For me that article was about a paradigm change in my anachronistic views on gender. I know a couple of Non-binary people and serveral who are transgender but there is always a little part of me that still breaks everything down along male/female divides. This meant that when I saw that diagram my brain did a little flip/double take. Then I read more of the article and almost slapped myself. Slowly but surely I am getting there.

Most of those songs reminded me about the song for "Guess Who" by Rub Ibarra:

Did my first run to Day 0 and failed, obviously. Congratulations on the artist for designing a main character that my partner finds as compelling as the enemies. The number of times she has sat watching me play something and been commenting on how awesome all the enemies I have to destroy look, this is the first time she has been positive about the hero(es). Loved my first run - I get other people's complaints about inaccessible rooms and computers but the arc of getting the good gear to get through it makes those early frustrations feel awesome. The controls have been suitably tweaked and now feel intutitive and comfortable and the later levels have that perfect player story of 'what the fuck is this thing and how the hell am I supposed to beat it? Oh, ah, now I see' Also, remote detonate is the best My minor complaints: - The bug is overpowered as all shit - it is fairly easy to drum up money with them that feels cheap as I don't have a risk/reward element to it (I can still hack a computer that has been bugged so I can still get a successful heist AND make all the bug money) - I am still not enjoying the purge which just feels really underpowered to the point where I never use it due to having it on the item wheel (instead of its own dedicated button) and it taking forever to recharge (even with the boost) - Hacking drones next to doors causes doors to open, this happens all the time and is the worst as I have been caught out by it, not sure what I would recommend on that but it does feel particular annoying as most of the time you are relying on the drone to clear the room that you don't want to go into just yet

Yup, downloaded it. Dan from Giant Bomb has said some positive things about it on the Bombcast.

Have watched the first 3 episodes of 'Between' on Netflix. To avoid some inevitable spoilers I would recommend not reading the show blurb and just diving straight in. The premise has been used plenty of times (mysterious outbreak in small town) but it has been effective. Also, this show is fairly brutal with its deaths so far. The acting is so-so but above the usual par of the genre and it does improve as the series progresses. Anyway it is a definite thumbs up to the show and I was surprised by how much I have been enjoying it. I also like that the standard pacing of a TV show isn't required (each episode doesn't have to end on a cliff hanger and there doesn't have to be a 'beat' every 10 minutes) because of the Netflix funding.

Metacritic do bodge scores sometimes but they leave Eurogamer well alone now. Going off the Xbox One page it is interesting to see very few games getting over the 85% hump. I think that might be to do with the dearth in reviews for the platform because a low scoring review never used to have that kind of impact on the x360, but one person gives a game a 40 or 50 and a game will plummet into low 70s or high 60s. Good to know it is still coming out - bummed I didn't get to play it this weekend.

Just finished watching the Dead Rising film and I've been drinking Honey Jim Beam with Ginger Ale. That shit is delicious. The film is weird because the writing is solid and the acting is fine but the direction and editing just have no idea about pacing. I am very drunk for the first time in a month and it is the best.

Still not on the xbox store - were there problems with cert or something?

I've never really liked 80s synth music. Vangelis in particular irritates the hell out of me and that Daft Punk homage on the Tron soundtrack had me gritting my teeth all the way through the film. It is dramatic but I honestly can't help it.

Yeah, it is supposed to be out on Xbox One but I can't see it on the store.

I thought the exact opposite. In fact, I almost commented yesterday that films have about 4 months to stop putting 80s influenced synth in their adverts before I start ignoring them completely (like when every film had the Inception clang in it).

Yeah, I need Totalbiscuit to weigh in on this before I buy. Just kidding. I will ask, as I asked in the Rezzed thread, are there customisable buttons? That melee button really doesn't work well assigned to RB on the Xbox One controller. Not a deal breaker, but an annoyance I had while playing it during the show.

To be fair to that community, there are also a lot of people in that thread who are not defending the stance. The conversations are also largely civil, which I think is a good start.

Arrrgh, Darks Souls II Scholar of the First Sin is on sale on Xbox One. I must be strong, must resist. Especially as I keep wanting to quit my job.

Right, it wasn't the post my friend was involved in. It was an interesting listen because Bain basically articulates concerns that people have voiced about him. The whole 'think about the lives of people you are affecting' line was accurate but I just wish he applied that to his own logic. For some reason he only sees people coming out to destroy him and thinks little of the impact his words have on other people. The description he gave of being on cancer treatment and people tweeting him telling him to die was kind of heatbreaking but counter pointed with the abuse that he has wreaked through his own careless comments and broadcasts... It is like he completely lacks empathy outside of his direct family. I just don't understand how he can talk about the number of followers he has and cannot make the next logical step of what that means when he says something off the cuff. That he talks about the normality of getting death threats and does not seem to want to improve that... I just don't get it. I know this has all been said before but yeah, it was desperately painful.

Yeah, should have been more specific the piece I linked to (I think it was in our ironically named 'ethics' thread) was your piece about improving the reputation of gaming. I liked it a lot and glad to read that you still frequent the internet as I heard that things got a little rough for a while.

Do you have a link to this? I am a little worried that a friend of mine might have been on one his podcasts during one of these defences as the violence comment is something he mentioned to me while I was in Montreal.

Do we have the Claire Hosking posting in our forums? I love your stuff if it is, going so far as to quote you in a recent article I wrote: http://www.arcadianrhythms.com/2015/03/gta-v-stop-talking-so-loud-i-can-hear-what-youre-saying/ On the topic of Mario Strikers, I thought it was great and having the Nintendo characters added the personality it needed, but I still think that SEGA Soccer Slam is a better game (made by the same developers).

Some of the spoilers make me excited about Orange is the New Black. I watched the first series and stopped because of reasons discussed in the spoilers about Piper.

Yeah, maybe the bad Carpenter stuff like Prince of Darkness comes close to what The Guest is emulating but really I see more influences in stuff like all the Prom Night sequels (the setting at the end of the film oozes 80s horror film) and all those bad Rutget Hauer films (like Blind Fury released in 1990). The Guest has none of the inventiveness of John Carpenter's 80s stuff and is deeply steeped in the real schlock. The plot seems deliberately bad in the way that it is barely conceivable that everyone would take this stranger into their house without so much as an eyebrow being raised.

Fair enough, I will admit that it lacked the spin that "You're Next" put on the home invasion flick. That said, I think that as an homage it nailed everything that I expect from a bad 80s genre film. Sometimes, like Hobo with a Shotgun, all the directors want to do is make a film exactly like what came before.