Hermie

Speaking of Twitter and games writing cliches, #gamejournalistpickuplines was going around yesterday. Especially check out the origin Jason Schreier.

I recently bought a PS3 with Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time, and I was thoroughly charmed. The style plays a lot with 60s sci-fi futurism, the Crank time puzzles are really clever, and the weapons are batpoop loco. I would throw down some frost mines to freeze enemies in place, set up some proximity bombs around them, throw up four lightning rods in a square, that connect together and shock anyone near them, then throw up a disco ball so that if they unfreeze, they simply start dancing, and finally throw up a black portal to another dimension where a creature named "Fred" will reach out his tentacles and eat anyone near the hole, picking off left-overs with my personally modified shotgun. This was my first Ratchet game, and while the covers may scream "late 90s antropomorphic childrens cartoon", I think you may be pleasantly surprised, like I was. I guess there's an actual reason that R&C survived the PS3 jump over Jak and Sly?

Ooh, I forgot about that thing. I might go if I can A) spare the travel expenses and get a press pass.

Yesterday was all about the Asian movies. 13 Assassins is Takashi Miike's newest film, and... It's 7 Samurai, but with more blood. That's pretty much it. Entertainment! [edit]Apparently it's a remake of an Eiichi Kudo film, makes sense, as it's still way less crazy than "regular" Miike. Haru's Journey was a touching little road movie about a young girl and her grandpa, and all their family relationship. It dragged a bit, but some of the drama really hit home. I Saw The Devil is a fantastic Korean thriller that had me at the edge of my seat. From the director of The Good, the Bad and the Weird. The Bad guy from that movie is the good guy here, while the good guy from Oldboy is the bad guy. My favourite so far.

More festival! Source Code: Really cool, despite some plotholeyness. Made up for by strong performances and execution. Either way, it's cool that original, more complex movies like Source Code & Inception still get made and in a world that keeps dressing Martin Lawrence as a fat woman. While Sound of Noise didn't quite sell me on all aspects, it's still an enjoyable Swedish film if the concept "musical terrorism" sounds even remotely interesting. It's based on a really cool short film starring the same drummers: 26eyBmUwi6w The Cave of Forgotten Dreams is that one movie where Werner Herzog goes into an ancient cave with a 3D camera. Like his South Pole movie, it's all about the beautiful shots while Herzog's soothing German voice asks esotheric questions about nature, history and philosophy. The 3D was a little jarring in the interviews, but worked great to convey the depth and curve of the cave wall. American: The Bill Hicks Story is a fairly straight-forward documentary about a fairly straight-forward comedian. I didn't know much about him, so it was fascinating to learn the trajectory of his life.

I'm not a history guy at all, so I don't know about all that, but my biggest issue was, similar to you I think, how they try to be all about coyness and intrigue, but then they keep spelling out everything. Instead of series that are better at criminal and political intrigue [read: The Wire] Where you would just see a boss wave and say "take care of it", and someone nod. Here it was that, then we see the assassin explicitly get ordered, then assassin overtly seducing target, THEN the body shows up. It didn't take enough risks (in writing anyways, there's plenty of tits and fucking). Film festival started here today. Rubber, the psychic killer tire movie, was super weird, but fun in it's absurdity. American Grindhouse is great if you want John Landis, Joe Dante and other talking heads to teach you the basics of exploitation cinema. Animal Kingdom is an intense, character-driven crime thriller, if you can deal with the Australian accents and/or seeing Guy Pierce with a porn mustache. More to come.

Agreed, Herzog is one of the few people in any medium that can be accurately described as a "force of creativity". I'll be volunteering at the film festival here next week, so I'll definitely catch his cave movie. I saw his South Pole documentary a few years back, and some of his imagery really stuck with me. That was also a case of "Hey, what's up with Antartica? I'll jump on a plane with one other guy and a camera and find out".

Kingzrat Congratulation, Kingz! As far as "dressing as an adult" goes, the way you dress certainly can have a large effect on how you feel. While my usual uniform tend to center around dorky t-shirts (unemployed student, go figure), I still like occasions to dress up in something proper, simply because they are clothes that make me feel like I look good. I think it might have been a mistake to let your sister go wild instead of having more of a say yourself? Because when you pick out a shirt in the morning, and you're able to look yourself in the mirror and go "Yeah.", this not only has an effect on how you feel about the clothes and yourself, it also means you carry yourself better. You give of the air of "This is how I style", instead of "I'm trying to dress to fit my paygrade". Which, if you're going around being nervous about people possibly getting that impression, you're probably subconsciously projecting this already. You said it yourself, you feel uncomfortable in those clothes. THEN AGAIN I currently have a giant Deadpool on my chest so what the hell do I know about adultdom?

Definitive proof: Crysis 2 was dumbed down.

I dreamt that I went back in time, to when I was only a few years old, and spied on me and my parents, and how my city used to be. I didn't have to be that sneaky, because they obviously didn't know how I was gonna look. If you want to be all Freudian about it, I guess I'm escaping into my past? (My parents are divorced now, my sister struggling, and I moved away from the city.)

This is great, I love reading stuff like this, and you write it so that even people with only a casual interest in the game gets drawn in.

Happy birthday, Frenchie! And a belated happy birthday to Orvi-bro.

Perhaps because DICE are Swedish? Either way, I don't think you can get very far speculating on if an "American" game is "gritty" or not, but rather thinking about the perceived audience that a developer is going after. Because let's face it, with a few exceptions (like Schafer and friends), most developers/publishers are working with their focus groups and demographics in mind. This is why games like Quantum Theory happen, not because "the average American game has gritty bros and shit-colored sky", but "the popularity of games like Gears of War indicates that the 18-24 year olds in the west couldn't be more excited about poop-sky, so we better make a game that resembles that". It's a small, but significant distinction, since I don't think you were actually shooting for a list of western games with blue skies?

The sensationalism is getting annoying indeed. Where are you guys getting proper news? I've been mostly relying on Americans living in Japan, like @Matt_Alt, @cheapyD and @Brian_Ashcraft. Matt_Alt especially is doing a lot of translation of real news.

I do agree that if you are going to discuss a game in length, you should do that in the respective threads. Especially if there are spoiler thoughts. When I finish games like Red Dead Redemption or Enslaved I usually track down the threads to see what people said about them, but no way I'm digging through the thread for whenever people posted about them.

Definitely keep with it. It takes a little while, but it seems that the actors and writers grow into the characters, especially Troy.

Happy birthday to The Fastest Desiato!

I'm not meaning to jump to any conclusions, neither about the Japanese nor the people of New Orleans or Haiti, of course. I should have mentioned before, while the paper itself can be quite tabloid, the anthropology professor quoted mentioned studying a hunger catastrophe in south-west Japan in the 1730s, so when he said there is a difference in mindset, I believed it. Here's the article if you want to google translate. I apologize for not elaborating properly earlier.

What the Blix said.^ I know the general gaming audience is not super interested in the "real" game-making stories, but there are definitely people like me who find it fascinating. It's another reason I lament the death of Thumbs, because of the interesting behind-the-scenes stories from both the regular hosts and the guests. I assume this is true for most others members too, so you can bet you have an audience for that here. (Translated: More! Mooooore.)

I just read a Norwegian news article about how there has been almost no looting at all in Japan, and instead people are lining up at super-markets orderly, where the stores are either heavily discounted or giving away supplies for free for those who need it. This in contrast to disasters like New Orleans or Haiti, where people quickly resorted to id instincts and started plundering. The anthropologist they talk to say that it's because the Japanese are raised with a different mindset, where they know they are not the center of the universe, so to speak. They know there's always someone worse off than them. A fascinating detail, that at least has me thinking about the implications of the western, first-world mindset and what would happen if a zombie apocalypse catastrophe happened here.

I want to echo the sentiment of wanting more details/post-its about what grew into Epic Mickey. I assume Getting Drawn Into A Dark Twisted Fantasy World™ and Choosing Between Bad And Good Moral Choices™ both came about from Warren Spector? ...I just realized Warren Spector might be the Tim Burton of the game industry? Or is that Hong Kong American McGee?

Those are some really solid questions, too bad the guy you were talking to clearly doesn't spend any time thinking about game design, and could only reply "Uhm... we put more guns in the game!".

I think you misspelled the name of the game. It's "Shadows of the DAMNED". Also, your torch is your side-kick is a talking skull is all your guns. The only thing I wasn't sold on was the voice of Garcia Hotspur, but I can forgive that, because his name is Garcia Hotspur.

AAAAAAAAAHH AAAAAAH: uzwK02OYrTk

I got really excited when I heard about both those projects, because if there's one thing Aronofsky is good at, it's writing/directing a really deep, conflicted main character, that usually has to face themselves, what they are. Robocop and Wolverine are both characters that are primarily known as ass-kickers, but their "thing" both contain themes that can be mined for really compelling character studies. Retaining your humanity while in a cyborg body, or what does it mean to be "human" at all, dealing with immortality and the solitude it brings with it, and so on. [edit]That said, I am also a little disappointed that it will be a while before we get another story that lives completely inside Aronofsky's head.