LOPcagney

Played it and there are indeed some great moments. The conversations with the priest trying to seduce the married woman is funny, and the priest/nun romance was hilarious. Congrats on getting mentioned in Kotaku.

I've been wanting to get Zak and Wiki for a while now, but I just haven't gotten up the courage to actually buy a level-based puzzle game. My fear is to buy it and run through it in like half an hour. Is there anyone who has the game and can attest to it's longevity?

Well, it's an opinion thing. They were all great games anyway by anyone's standards.

Nooooo! I agree that Episode Two was as good as Half Life has ever been, but Episode One was such a disappointment. The only marginal improvement over the original was in how you interacted with Alex, but the pacing, the level-design, everything felt so condensed after playing the original. This might have to do with the way different people play through games. I often take the scenic route because I've found that Valve usually pays attention to making it's worlds beautiful and immersive. However, Episode One felt so rushed. It had none of the heart-stopper moments of HL2 (like the or the or the whole game for that matter. Episode One was just a rehash of the most generic parts of the original crammed into a 5-hour experience. Very

Yes! That's another one of my favorites! It's hilarious. I heard it off Maladies. "...all Halloween orange and... chim-i-ney red."

Wow. I'm trying to make it through all 3 seasons of Battlestar before the season 4 premier and I just got to the boxing episode in season 3. I know people didn't like the last season because it didn't have the same meta-arc that the previous two did, but I thought the fight episode with Kara and Lee was spectacular. It may be the single most moving episode of all 3 seasons combined, with the possible exception of Act of Contrition from season 1. :tup:

I agree. The bridge was definitely my favorite part of the game.

Wow. That must have been spectacular. They strike me as a band that could play a seriously good live show, especially in a small venue. I may not know enough of Wait's stuff to judge. I own Heart of Saturday Night, Mule Variations, and my dad has Orphans. I've listened to the Beautiful Maladies a couple times through. Maladies definitely represents what I love about Tom Waits, which is how offbeat and utterly dark he can be, and a visit to Wiki tells me that Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs are from the same time period, so I'm sure I'd love them. Truth be told, I almost like his spoken-word stuff better than the music. What's He Building in There is definitely one of my favorites. Hot Little Rocket is good: They rock. They definitely have potential. I'd check them out if they came down to NYC. Tally Hall may be going on tour again soon. They just re-recorded their first studio album for a bigger label, and they come from Michigan, so I don't think North is going to be a problem.

Yes, I do feel much less left out, thank you. I've definitely fallen in love with a few Canadian groups, the big ones being The New Pornographers and Moxy Fruvous, for which I have an incredible amount of respect and adoration. If we're talking classics, I'd say my favorite would have to be Bowie, though I'm a Tom Waits fan too (mostly his more recent, Mule Variations onward stuff). You should check out Tally Hall. They're the one band so far I can honestly say I knew before they really caught their break. My friend and I arranged for them to play at our High School for free a couple years ago, and now they're moving onto a major label. We even got a mention in their blog . They define quirky music and are awesome. Run Chico Run is interesting. I like. Sunset Rubdown is :tup: . In the spirit of all these 8-bit bands, I'm sure Cyriak is old news, but I think "no more memory" is great.

Wow. A+. I have the guilty feeling that my musical tastes are slightly divergent from the rest of the Thumbs community. I'm very much a indie/quirky-rock guy, and I have the feeling theres a lot of techno/trance love here. That said, I love the Lost Levels. I might get the CD.

Theres also that element of fate: That there are good people and bad people but in the end, death is arbitrary, nondiscriminatory, and inescapable.

I liked Be Kind Rewind. A lot of people complain that Gondry's movies are too surreal and distant that it's hard to find any real emotion in them, but I love the way he infuses these quirky worlds and situations he creates with real-world messages.

Speaking of concept treatments like this, the same guy who did Oldboy did another movie in her Vengeance Trilogy (is that what it's called) that details a womans journey of revenge, and as the movie goes on, the image slowly fades from color to black-and-white to symbolize her descent into despair and cruelty.

I saw two movies tonight. First Paprika, which I think I remember being discussed earlier in this thread. I'd heard some negative things about it but despite a few flaws, I thought it was spectacular. It always pisses me off when movies try to make a dream sequence and it turns out looking like the rest of the movie with a little bloom added in post-production. Paprika nailed the dream aesthetic. Then I saw Death Proof, which was a huge disappointment. It was just boring and wasn't worth the time I spent watching it. I love Quentin, but mehh. I felt like if it had been shorter, it would have actually been better.

Ooo another concert coming up. Pillows in May, if I can get tickets.

Yeah, the most important thing in convincing your audience something is real is in making it move like a real thing. Photo realistic paintings aren't nearly as evocative of a human being as well-puppeteered marionettes.

I don't have a PSP unfortunately, but the trailers I know look incredible. I love the idea of combining the rhythm genre with a game that would appeal to the more hard-core gamer. (didn't Mother do something like this as well?) All I know is, aesthetically, it's incredible, the music especially, when the little guys work up a frenzied war-chant with their little atonal, falsetto voices. Laaaaaaaa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-laaaaaaaaa.

It's funny, because I was reading the Penny Arcade post earlier in support of EA and the points he brings up are interesting. I'm not saying 2k should sell, but I think now more than ever publishers are realizing that this is an industry of innovation, and I'm glad EA is trying to go along with that.

I am officially a Battlestar convertee. Finished the first season last week and now four into season two. It's not Firefly, but it's definitely the best sci-fi show on television.

Yeah, but more than the actual quality of Blue Harvest, I could never justify buying any less than the entire season of a show. Paying full-price for a 1 hour special seems ridiculous to me, and this is coming from someone who unfortunately loves to buy crap.

Yes! I've actually ended up buying a few indie games over the years. This is one. Gibbage and Another World are two others. They're how I found this forum in the first place. Although I have to say, some of the best indie gaming experiences are still free: Knytt, Ikachan, and Cave Story being my three favorites. Cave Story was pretty big a few years back, but almost no-one knows Ikachan, which is frankly the Portal to Cave Story's Half-Life 2: short, quirky, and extremely memorable. If you search around, you should be able to find an English patch. Check them out.

Ironically, I couldn't get through it after the first page because I dislike racing games.

Moxy Fruvous... And I know this is rude, but none of the links work anymore. Would someone mind emailing me the .exe if it's still floating around anywhere? I can't find it online.

Yes, and No Country for Old Men. I have to say though, as much as I loved both films, I thought Blood was better. It was extremely powerful, and the music by Jonny Greenwood was spectacular. And it felt so gritty and real. Definitely my favorite film of the year.

This remind me of the arcade game Ballistics. Even though you have no clue what you're doing (Ballistics, I mean) the adrenaline rush in incredible if you find the cabinet in an arcade somewhere.