Wrestlevania

Two words: "hat switch"

I think the developers are aiming more for the Appleseed kind of thing; agile suits of oversized power armour, rather than tanks with legs. That brief first-person shot does make Hawken look like a twitch shooter more than the action-strategy game MechWarrior was. I suppose it's taking things further along again, after Activision lost the FASA/BattleTech license and jumped to the Heavy Gear* universe instead. Does look promising though, even if you won't need to dig out your ancient Sidewinder joystick from the back of the loft. Loved that thing, especially being able to twist the stick for torso rotation. *Whatever happened to the HG series anyway? The second game was loads of fun, but it seemed to vanish without a trace all the same.

Sorry, been out of gaming for a looong time now it seems. :lame So I haven't been pushing along Idle Thumbs network sessions for months now. :extralame Last week's Forza session was the usual laughter riot of yore, however, so I'm hoping I can start making some time for gaming again. I'll try to add more stuff to the Steam calendar in future (is anyone using this?).

I also find Wednesdays agreeable.

Superb.

Via le Boing Boing (with nice kinetic type, too): 4Z2Z23SAFVA Reminds me of the seminal Yahoo Answers episode: w_RaPOOVX1Y

I was listening to this at the time--remarkably effective.

I like the KLONK! when she can't get it past the furniture.

Just been reminded of this sketch from one of my favourite British comedy series of yore, The Fast Show: LwbJ-N8rrek Appreciate the canned laughter may bring out some of you purists in hives...

~licks finger, holds it in the wind~ So, who's up for a regular Halo Reach session with fellow Thumbs then?

That was a good laugh. I've not played for many weeks now, but I'm still interested in co-op or Firefight if others are. If you see me online, send me an invite (even if I'm not playing Reach at the time). I've no intention of getting the expansion btw either, so vanilla is fine with me.

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Clue:

Right, so, we're still playing every Sunday night on Steam at 9pm BST. Last night, we had enough people to play Versus for the first time in a while. It kind of went like this: pnRVIC7kS4s

Making something cliff-side like that would be enough to drag me back in. For the moment, I've burnt out pretty quickly; I seem to enjoy the exploring/spelunking most of all, as I'm not clever or patient enough to build all this interesting/clever shit you lot have come up with to date. I also enjoyed the first bit of skinning I've done in ages, too, as it was nice and quick and I like the chunky, lo-fi nature of Minecraft's models and textures.

Likewise. I think the only Gibsons I haven't read are Burning Chrome, Count Zero and Spook Country. I liked Pattern Recognition a lot, too. It was interesting to hear him talk about how he's changed as a writer; how he now focusses more closely on crafting lives instead of people. "No-one in Neromancer had kids, or parents!" His skill in place-making is noticeably better in PR, too. I didn't have that slightly frustrating alienation I experienced at times, whilst trying to understand the layout of some scenes, like I did with Neuromancer and some of his other earlier works. And I know very little of London either, so that didn't make any real difference either I think.

I'm just going to burst in here and add nothing of any real value, so feel free to skip it. I met William Gibson on Wednesday! Went to a lecture by him at the local arts centre, where he read some of his new book to everyone and then candidly and openly answered a lot of question about his books and writing. After that, he signed autographs and I got to chat with him for a few minutes about Inception ("I loved it! I thought it was one of the greatest films in the last 20 years") and the possibility of a Neuromancer film ever actually happening (sounds like it just might, at last). Cheekily, I subsequently asked him when he was going to meet Christopher Nolan for a coffee then, to which he put his head in his hands and said, "If you know how to get hold of the man..!" Sounds like he's tried and had no luck. But to be vaguely topical again, I've just started his new book, Zero History, and I'm really enjoying the refinement of his prose and sense of place.

That L4D2 mod/reskin/whatever has merely been done for the sake of it, not because it actually produces anything of genuine value (at least to my mind). I can't imagine it being anything more than maybe 30 seconds of "oh cool!" dorking about for people who've played either, before you realise L4D was never going to work convincingly in a blocky, cramped environment. Nor Minecraft, were it to feature machine guns and hordes of coordinated swarming undead. "Just because you can doesn't mean you should," as the saying goes.

It's brilliant, except that it doesn't work in multiplayer! That would be hilarious. Anyway, speaking of drunk, someone thought this was a good idea... U7ICu5empps Shark officially jumped imo.

Not horrible; bland. I was anticipating something akin to Pan's Labyrinth, shot with the same of sort of tactile hyper-reality of The Cell (I personally love the visual execution of that film). Certainly, the opening scenes had some beautiful shots in them; the princess running around the citadel, Alexander in that sand bowl, the elephant swimming and the beach they ford out onto where they meet the mystic. But it pretty much fizzled after that in my opinion. For me, the lack of dynamics was particularly noticeable towards the end of the film, with all that wonderful architecture mostly being shot from fairly rote - albeit slow-tracking - angles. Disappointment, then, from a visual point-of-view. Self-indulgent teen angsty wank from a story point-of-view. I have real issues with anyone manipulating children, so I accept this may well be clouding my better judgement. But I still stand by the fact I thought the main character's writing and overall portrayal were shallow and under-developed.

Just watched The Fall; remarkably underwhelming. Bad sound design, bland cinematography (despite the spectacular locations) and a confused, incoherent mess of a story. And I mean "confused, incoherent" in the sense that it was awkward and lumpen to watch, not because it was supposedly crafted that way. Feels like I'm coming down off some cheap, weak drugs, having been promised the good stuff. Watery, wholly unsatisfying pap.

I don't know, why are you posting in questions? And shall we play in the original or the sequel? I vote L4D2, as I don't have the original installed any more and it's a ball-ache to sip huge installs down a ~1.5Mb line.

An amazing fan-made opening sequence for AMC's forth-coming The Walking Dead TV series: -TWCXE0hsbQ Really looking forward to this--just a few weeks to wait now. I've also just stumbled upon a trailer for the Coens' latest epic, True Grit. Looks like it could be another fantastic Western from them, albeit more "classic" this time.

So I've decided to get a bit more serious about my love for music again, by which I'm planning to put together semi-regular mixes and music collections. After a fortuitous bout of insomnia yesterday, I've compiled my first mix in about a decade. I'm learning how to use ACID Pro at the same time, so it's a bit scruffy in places. It's not ambitious either, but I liked the way the tracks all fitted together as a whole. It's a Progressive/Tech House mix, and you can download it or listen online (via the most excellent SoundCloud).

Using your own custom tile set; yes, it should be. I've not done it personally though.