Thyroid

"Not the best game ever, but it's worth a rental. 9.6/10." - IGN.com

The fan reaction would have pretty bad if Telltale had decided

"It's so good. It's like you're a man kissing your girlfriend, and you're not even gay." - IGN.com "This should be the official game of the suicide prevention movement." - IGN.com "Everything I know, I learned from this game." - IGN.com "I was making whoopee with my wife when, towards the end, I screamed out her name instead of this game's. Weird." - IGN.com "It puts the bad back in badass. And ass. So, so much ass. I reluctantly give it a 9.0 out of 10." - IGN.com

I've been throwing this around all over the internet, and I'll say it again: it is one of the best games I have ever played.

If they did, and it was for that reason, then they're stupid. Anything that brings out a sincere emotional reaction in your audience is a good thing. If it's a sad reaction, it usually means it's bittersweet. Team Ico's games are proof of that. Although I can't see them changing things like that now. Not with Old Man Murray on board, anyways. (Discovering that website this past summer was one of the best things to happen to me.)

Edit: In retrospect, this was the stupidest fucking thing. I'm ashamed I wrote this.

Is that better? I'll try making it shorter in the morning...

The IGN thread went from hilarious to somewhat depressing today afterI realised how badly written some of the very popular websites are. So this is the Good Writing Thread , where you post anything that is well-written, preferrably actually saying something intelligent and/or useful. Humour would be a big bonus. The only website I can think of that fits that is Old Man Murray. Their Start to Crate, first of many Roberta Williams articles, America Under Attack (9/11) and America Wins the War are all examples of why the website is so highly thought of. What do you know/suggest? Link anything good you come across as well. (PS: Although this isn't what I'm suggesting in the thread, I did come across some amusing trolling yesterday.)

Anything is fine.

"Momma said knock you out. This water buffalo's going to knock you out." - IGN.com I don't know how they come-up with this stuff.

"This game is a 9.0!" - IGN.com, United States. "THIS GAME IS A 9.3!" IGN.com, Australia.

I found this to be pretty inspiring. Watch it if you need a pick-me-up. 42E2fAWM6rA

Heh. I started watching foreign, indie, classic, actually good big budget cinema when I was sixteen. I know a small handful of others who do the same. Then again, I was the only person out of 30 who played Monkey Island instead of Halo, so maybe my tastes are those of a minority's.

Fallon's a bit of a geek, yeah. The demo is excellent and very funyn throughout. A lot of the best lines are just throwaway ones you won't pick up unless you're screwing around a little ("Stay still!" "Smells like a whale. Ate a lot of cabbage. And then died in your mouth. A year ago.") It's going to be a long, hard wait till December (which is when my copy of the game arrives). Man...Sigh.

I really liked it, but I thought the crew were a bit...dunno. I preferred McGillicutty's lot. I just don't see what's so great about "Yo, dude, bro" pirates, I guess! On the other hand, is the best Monkey Island line ever.

Oh man, here it comes. I know I haven't fully matured yet, and I still have an incomprehensibly long way to go, but Idle Thumbs was responsible for me going from "OMG METAL GEAR GRAPHICS" to...something else. That classic Ron Gilbert interview was a huge part of it. Being quoted as "one of the many idiots who plague the internet" was also part of it (although I still stand by the thought that I wish WoW was a single player game, but it seems like Deathspank has finally fulfilled that particular wish). It got me writing again, and although I'm not nearly as good as my idols are yet, I'm slowly, slowly, oh so slowly, getting there. I've at least gone from being completely revolted by what I write to only only hating it a little, but still liking a line or two. Let me put it this way. Although it wasn't solely responsible (and my recent discovery of Old Man Murray is carrying this kind of thing on), I owe Idle Thumbs a lot for 1. Making me feel that I'm not completely alone in this godforsaken country, and 2. Helping me grow-up a bit. I have something like 15 Thumbs articles printed out and sitting in desk drawer and I used to read all the time. Life in Jordan is pretty restrictive, and for the longest time I thought I was some freak of nature for liking things that no-one had heard of, and -- See, my dad wouldn't bother getting internet till 2004, and even then it was dial-up. In the year or so it took me to discover email and get over the initial wide-eyed awe, I somehow managed to come across Ron Gilbert's blog, and get to Thumbs from there. Articles like I Kill You, The Emotion Game, The F Word or, the one I used to think about the most, GameRankings Is Not God, were things that completely changed my way of thinking about video games. Maybe I was just an impressionable 15 year old, but I basically owe Idle Thumbs for a push down the right road. You know, everything considered, especially living in Jordan, I feel like it's expected for me to be an a-class moron, which is, again, something I'm trying to shake off. But thanks, Idle Thumbs. I still have all those articles I printed out right beside me. I can take a photo to prove it!

I think he has in the past (either that or I'm echoing something I've always believed in), and what he means is, because full, 100% reality is impossible to depict, you have to create a fantasy (regardless of how well based it is in our world) and give it its own reality, and then depict that as accurately as possible. His "make everything seem as physically realistic as possible" indicates as much. Man, would it not be freaking awesome/heart-wrenching if you had to navigate the bird by stabbing it with harpoons? I remember there was one colossus that you had to hit to direct; there were teeth-like structures protuding off the top of his head and you hit them, forcing the Colossus to move in that direction. It'd be pretty interesting to see an extension of that idea in Toriko with the harpoons - except here you actually have to pick them up and stab it.

Bumpeth! Haven't seen these yet, but they look like two different trailers, so: Trailer + Making Of TSG 09 trailer

I've been too lazy to see anything for the past two months or so, but I did see: - Watchmen: Pretty good film, adequate adaptation. They had to lose some of the depth for length's sake (so I'll need to look at the Director's Cut), but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I prefer the book, but it's well worth seeing. - ********* Express: meh. It had some good lines, but the shit writing that goes into these things...you know, I've done my share of terrible writing, but if I'm putting my real name on the line then I'd try to make the whole thing halfway interesting, at the very least. I don't remember if it was just the end of the movie that ruined it for me, but either way I'm left feeling a little short-changed. - F For Fake: I think that, outside of Citizen Kane, Orson Welles was one underrated mofo, and this movie shows why. He's constantly re-inventing himself, and for the most part the movie is engrossing and very interesting. I think my favorite part is how he's basically invented a new kind of film that mixes-up fiction with reality and somehow pulls it off without sounding too preachy. Welles called it "the film essay"; I'd say it's more of a "passive film essay". It doesn't preach, it isn't pretentious, but it's got a lot of substance beneath the style. I enjoyed it, if for making me think about its subject matter a bit.

Potheads say the same thing about legalising marijuana. I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

That particular scene seems to indicate that the game will play like Ico, but with a concentration on building platforms to walk on instead of opening the road (for example, because Toriko is heavy, you have to find a way to make sure the platform that he's going to walk on supports him). The difference in detail between the boy and the griffin suggests an angled camera point. I would totally not be surprised if there were scenes where you have to make it understand that it has to surface, or you will die clutching it under water, since it's too dumb to figure it out on its own. Hmm. There's some potential here.

No. By the time it uploaded, they were all ready gone. Oh well. Thanks for the compliment. She also gives her thanks and a thumbs up.

She ripped up the finished paper, didn't leave me enough time to make another good one (the first had markers and all!), and then wouldn't stop laughing long enough for me to take a half-decent photo, but I think this was OK anyways. Put it for the Brutal Legend demo competition on Facebook. I did NOT buy her that t-shirt. Her sisters think it's cute, so whatever.

They were supposed to finish-up by this year, but they needed more time. I think they're pegging for early 2010 in Japan, and a little after that everywhere else.

Oh, by the way, it occurred to me a few months ago that the reason the kid must look so, uh, cartoony, is that the camera will be angled. You have this huge creature on one side, very realistic-looking, and this really tiny kid next to him without all the fluff; far enough, they look the same. It's so obvious that I'm surprised I didn't immediately figure it out. My friend has this excellent idea on what the ending is going to be like. Because Toriko is dumb and doesn't understand things (lending puzzles where the solution is obvious but the damn thing won't sit still), it contributes towards the ending . Heart-breaking, eh. They'll have to have a really, really spectacular ending to top that one. (My own idea was that , but I figured that was a cheap idea; execution could change it though.)