twmac

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Everything posted by twmac

  1. Movie/TV recommendations

    Yup, The Guest is great if you like the films it is succesfully aping. I sat through it and came out the other side hating it because it is such a perfect rendition of a cheesy 80s thriller/horror that all I could think of was how much I hated those films. My wife, who is a huge fan of Nightmare on Elm St and all the other schlock from that period loved it. I still bought the soundtrack because, well, it was pretty great.
  2. Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

    I was initially not at all interested in MGS V, simply because I have never enjoyed any MGS game but after playing Ground Zeroes, and seeing how much everything has improved in terms of control scheme I am not more interested. Just make sure those cut-scenes are skippable.
  3. Movie/TV recommendations

    The writing keeps surprising me. There is moment in Season 4 where the coach is trying to make this park safer because he witnesses a child get shot. I rolled my eyes at where I thought it was going to go and instead of being welcomed with open arms pretty much everyone starts pointing out that he can't just walk in, wave his hand and fix everything and that the problems are way more deep rooted than that. It wobbles a little bit after that but at least a show like that attempts to address a wider social problem. There is another bit where he politely mentions some of the 'problems' and gets verbally torn apart for his lack of a grasp on what is going on.
  4. Movie/TV recommendations

    Wow, until you said that right now I had never even thought about it. I guess the answer is that the direction remains the same and if it bothers you, I don't think they fix it. I have never noticed it so I can't even talk about it.
  5. Movie/TV recommendations

    Watched a bunch of things recently: Jurrassic World - A bit rubbish, but not JP2 rubbish. It spent a lot of time winking at the audience in terms of what we now know about dinosaurs etc, most of it is terrible though and the ending is pure Godzilla nonsense. There is one great scene in the film but in the context it would have been way more fun if the exchange had happened betwen Chris Pratt's character and Bryce Dallas Howard's character. I was kind of uncomfortable with the death in this film, certainly they avoided it being graphic but I found the way there was an extended scene with a person under emotional stress way more upsetting than some gory horror films. Friday Night Lights: The first series is the best but as it slipped into being a soap opera with some football politics in the background they really attempted to grow the characters. Some of the female roles are meaty and there are frequently great lines. An example of this is the main couple are arguing over football, the wife has just been promoted to principal of the school and is attempting to get more funding for education while the husband is trying to sort out tensions in the team and secure some of that funding to help training. The spat ends with: Husband - Do you know who I miss? The coach's wife who used to support me Wife (cocks her eyebrow) - Well... Do you know who I am looking forward to meeting? Husband (hesitates for a second because he knows he has overstepped the mark) - Who? Wife (grins slyly) - The Principal's husband Husband (pauses, gives her a wry smile) - Touche There is a good feel for a mutual relationship between the two of them that doesn't make them out to be a perfect couple but one that fights, discusses and then works things out. There is drama but there is never the drama of 'this marriage is OVER' kind that usually ruins these kinds of things.
  6. "Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

    I read this really interesting piece on actual ethics within Photo-journalism: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/posing-questions-of-photographic-ethics/?WT.mc_id=2015-MAY-KWP-INTL_AUD_DEV-0503-0531&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=IntlAudDev&kwp_0=20934&kwp_4=136288&kwp_1=158176&_r=0# Thought it was interesting to see how far spread it was within photography (National Geographic making the pyramids closer together) in aid of selling images.
  7. "Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

    Okay, I know that this doesn't help but I had to laugh at this comment below that Youtube video: "The fact Anita Sarkeesean transformed a corruption scandal in the game industries in a gender inequality problem, misleading public opinion etc etc can't justifie death threat. Her credibily among gamers is almost ruined and this should be enough. Threating her and accusing John Oliver of foolishly include her in his video is ignorant. The video is about Death Threats, revenge porn and non-existing legislation to protect people who are being harrased. That's all. He didn't talk about Gamer Gate and he didn't defend her based on her opinion just based on the fact her safety was in danger." The guy makes some valid points about nothing justifying death threats but the rest is an amazing leap.
  8. E3 2015

    I think that is exactly why I was initially excited by the Sony conference and then, three days later, became a little disgusted with it. Sony were harvesting dreams and appealing to the teen and early twenty year old in me. The truth of the matter was that most of their games were harking to an earlier time and although it definitely won hearts and minds, in the cold light of day, I now feel more jaded than ever. Leigh Alexander wrote a good piece on Sony's press conference and I have edited some of this post as a result (I started reading it after I started posting because I remembered that I meant to) of her using very similar language. http://boingboing.net/2015/06/16/the-only-things-you-really-nee-2.html Although Microsoft was dull and reserved by contrast, at least a lot of them were games coming out in the next year or so, not dreams and fairy tales.
  9. Freelancing Thumbs - We write right, alright?

    Blogs of the Round Table is fun but when we got involved it was a little underwhelming in how much feedback you get from the readers.
  10. Well, they might be the King/Queen of their country as each area seems to be divided up like that? At the moment I've been treating the guys in the East as a tribe of their own who are Spartan tough because their 'Keep' is constantly attacked, while the regents in the North are a bunch of wusses that don't called upon to do much of anything as they are the newest group and only produce variants of the melee class. Which comes to my one complaint, you could easily just make variants of the Hunter and ignore the other two classes as you tend to fight every enemy at range. They have infinite ammo (unlike the Alchemists) and it actually benefits them to run away from the AOE chargers.
  11. It really was. As someone who has been fascinated by the Crusader Kings stories but unwilling to play a PC game, let alone one that will require a lot of time investment, this game scratches that itch for emergent story telling. There are so many cool little stories to be told like how I got my first relic and the first person to wield it died tragically in their first battle (I only had two soldiers on the field but managed to carve my way through one encounter only to lose her at the very bitter end) and then pass it down to a 10 year old that I had to wait 5 years before I could use them... The fun comes more from your own internal history - you could totally write a piece of fanfiction about this game and fill in the blanks yourself. I would love to see an update that included more flavour quests so that it became unlikely to see repeats (I've seen a list of 40 and that seems like too few).
  12. Okay, it looks like I posted here a while back (forgot that I did) and the game finally came to Xbox One as a 'Games with Gold' deal. It is the best offering since Chariot (which has been delightfully frustrating). Here is a story that happened to me last night: After fighting back the Cadence I earned a Male Hunter called Irvun Septent, which was rad because I had stupidly made my two regents Alchemists so all their kids were coming out as variants of that type. Then a random event occurred where I was offered the chance to send Irvun away for 10 years on a hot air balloon. My new regent compound was due to be completed in ten years so I figured I would take the gamble. Irvun returned from his quest with two new traits – veteran and jaded (I think). He had seen some shit but I immediately installed him in the recently built compound (consigning him to a non-combatant role) and married him to a woman that was 49. That produced 2 kids before I got attacked by the cadence. I had to make a strategic decision on which land to protect; I settled for the one that unlocked a female Hunter called Yantyu. 5 years later, out of nowhere, Irvun’s wife died so I married him to Yantyu to get a pure breed of Hunter in my ranks (sorry Eugenics haters). At the same time a number of my Sages died so I ended up replacing some of my elite vanguard into that guild. 8 years later the cadence enemies attacked the regent compound that Irvun and Yantyu were in so I sent 5 members to help them out. Because my team were all young I wanted them to level up a bit so I held Irvun and Yantyu back. However it was clear that these guys were out-classing the rest of the group and I had to use them to scrape through (being able to hear enemies is a valuable skill) 6 years later, Irvun died having sired 2 kids with Yantyu, in a panic to keep my hero numbers up I married Yantyu to one her step sons (with her now at the age of 48 but still fertile), which was a bit icky but I figured ‘fuck it’. My regents, guild masters, and sages were dropping like flies as they reached their 60s and 70s, so my hero base was light with me trying to replace them (regents for making new heroes, guild masters for XP boosts, and sages for improving research). Then Yantyu and her husband’s regent compound got attacked again. At this point Yantyu was 68 years old and a total badass. She spent most of the combat protecting her woefully under levelled husband and showing the kids on the team sent to rescue her how it is done. Before and after that she still managed to have two more kids (also seem to be badass) before dying at the ripe old age of 91. I had to stop the game for a bit when her death was reported and go walk around my apartment. Also, I had no eligible females for one of my regents so he got married to a man and the two of them adopted 4 kids and raised them to be awesome alchemists.
  13. "Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

    We are always looking for writers on Arcadian Rhythms - a lot of us have slowed down recently (Shaun is writing more frequently for Rock Paper Shotgun and I have just stopped writing as frequently because my laptop blew up). So if you want to pitch something to us, we are definitely not professional but we can definitely provide feedback - not paid though.
  14. E3 2015

    PS Vita is going to be abandoned entirely
  15. Feminism

    That talk almost made me burst into tears at work. That is fucking painful.
  16. Movie/TV recommendations

    Rewatched Mad Max and Mad Max : The Road Warrior in preparation for Fury Road this weekend. Mad Max basically gave me flashbacks to being a kid being utterly traumatised (there are a couple of moments in that film that will haunt me forever - the baby shoe and the bouncing ball for example). It is actually a really solid film and I think it might be my favourite. Also, those piercing blues from Mel Gibson; it was obvious he was going to be a film star. Road Warrior has not aged as well as Mad Max but was still a pretty solid romp. The thing I liked the most that I never appreciated when I watched it previously is how well characterised each personality is, even with very little screen time.
  17. Damnit, fuck that game. It is one of only two PG games that have nothing remotely interesting going on with them (the other is the mediocre Legend of Korra).
  18. The Witcher 3: What Geralt Wants

    Locking on is utterly pointless, the one time it would be useful is on boss fights and you can't use them there. I played through about 8 more hours over the weekend and I have turned around on the story and the whole of the game. It happened while doing the Bloody Baron and Crone missions (I still haven't finished it completely) and, man, the game is really playing against my expectations. Really like how much you can tell the baron to go fuck himself.
  19. The Witcher 3: What Geralt Wants

    I have dropped about 3-4 hours on Witcher 3, and after having loved Witcher 2 I am very cool on this one. The open world seems to have led to a dilution of the strong story telling from 2, maybe I need to play more of it so that it becomes a little more thematically clear but it just seems to lack the rich side missions of the previous game and resorted to a Red Dead Redemption/Skyrim formula (AKA: boring as watching paint dry) that just means that I am not invested in it.
  20. "Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

    Kind of a combination of Ethics and Journalism: http://www.polygon.com/2015/5/19/8624665/big-indie-kickstarters-are-killing-actual-indies I really liked this, as the topic has been bothering me for a while with people getting on Kickstarter without clearly explaining that they have alternative funding.
  21. Post your face!

    Feelthedarkness, that picture is awesome. Thrik, you look nothing like I expected.
  22. I generally don't like music in games. Notable exceptions being Jet Set Radio, Spec Ops: The Line, Phantom Crash and Phantom Dust. I think this stems from my parents getting annoyed by repetitive loops on stuff like the Megadrive so I had to turn sound off entirely. Then someone let me borrow their PlayStation and FF8 and I hated the music in it so much that I turned the volume off on my TV and just played my own music over the top. I did the same to Quake and Diablo on the PC by playing my own music via CD. I loved the X360 because of its custom soundtracks and I don't think I can remember many soundtracks as a result. I've been putting up with the poor support on Xbox One for custom soundtracks but now that I realise there is a free Radio option on Xbox Music I have started snapping it and playing that while turning all in-game music off. I am having the same problem with the Witcher 3 right now that I feel has a jarring score that I don't want to listen to. It really just needs Warren Ellis and Nick Cave.
  23. Feminism

    So, then, as a counter point to this Kitty Powers' Matchmaker should be a breath of fresh air? http://www.magicnotion.com/matchmaker/
  24. Recently completed video games

    I finished Pneuma: Breath of Life over the weekend and really enjoyed it. The puzzles are very light and the play time is about 3-4 hours but I found that I enjoyed wanting more of the game rather than wishing that it would end. The key fun is self-obssessed narrator who thinks he is a god. Well worth the download and after the heaviness of State of Decay it was a welcome change.