Boris Stoke

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Posts posted by Boris Stoke


  1. I've done this eleven years in a row and completed it ten times.  This is the first year in a long while that I will not be participating.  It's gotten to the point where I have a billion first draft novels and I should probably just spend time rewriting one.  So that's what I'm planning to do this month.

     

    Hopefully.

     

    I hate rewriting.

     

    I highly recommend the nanowrimo experience for those interested.  It's very rewarding and as Tango mentioned, it's a great writing exercise.  You'll write a lot of crap but you'll find some diamonds in the rough too and you'll find cause to be impressed with yourself.


  2. I'm loving this game a ton.  It's so great.  You're right on, Video Games.  Total comfort food.

     

    I've enjoyed getting different idle thumbs friend requests.  I'm sorry if I don't play with you any time soon!  Eight month old baby requires a lot of attention.


  3. so I'm curious if you all read about it before and were influenced in your thinking by an [academic] text?

     

    I didn't read anything about the movie before my viewing.  I didn't even know the film existed! 

     

     I mean at one point he kills a man and it doesn't get much of a reaction out of him.

     

    I hadn't thought of this, but you're right.  He kills a man but he's more worried about the police showing up than he is about the fact he took a life.  It's the sort of thing that would make me think he killed before, but that goes so against his character.


  4. Exactly right.  If it was a demo then it'd be terrible, but it's designed to establish tone and mess with your head.  It succeeds there.  I'm sure Silent Hills proper will be an actual game.  The very nature of PT is sort of a riddle in itself and I think one of the points is that it's a riddle you don't know how to solve.  You feel trapped, just like all those poor saps that keep visiting Silent Hill.


  5. I was a big fan of the flashback sequence as well.  It was a nice short story in the middle of a movie that otherwise missed the mark for me.  It was sad, but also real.  It was a shame that he didn't try to comfort his wife after she confessed to him and was so darkly depressed, but there was no way he knew she was going to kill herself.  It's all very tragic, but he acts like a normal person would in that situation.  Even though she needs help at that time it's quite understandable that he'd need time alone to think after learning what his wife did.


  6. I'm apparently on the last loop of the hallway and haven't been able to figure it out.  The puzzles in this aren't really puzzles.... maybe one of them counts.  Mostly it's just "look at this thing to trigger a thing and then you can move on" which is not at all the same thing as a puzzle.  But most of the things you experience are really neat.

     

    I'm definitely interested in how they handle the full game.


  7. I was not a fan of this film. It really felt like it didn't know what it wanted to be. I guess it's more of a dramedy but some of the humor is so over the top that it clashes heavily with the serious parts of the movie. The "swear to your mother" bit was hilarious, but felt like it had no place in a movie that was primarily about a man who has trouble openin his heart because of what happened with his wife. At least? That's what I think the movie is about because it devotes the most time to it. The crime aspect really just feels like it's there to serve no real purpose.

    I really liked those inept thugs though.


  8. I played this some during the weekend.  So much fun.  If anyone wants to try and get a game together when the beta comes back my PSN name is Boris_Stoke.  I wouldn't be against working on that strike team again.


  9. I was also thinking about your comment on Jorge saving the dog, followed by the shot of that other dog that might be marching to its inevitable demise.  This really goes hand in hand with Jorge's comment to Viridiana about how helping out a handful of paupers doesn't help the thousands that are homeless.  It definitely seems to be an underlying point of the film that no matter what you do you can't help everyone, and going along with the fact that the paupers betray Viridiana at the end you could argue the film is even saying you can't help anyone.  Period.

     

    But it's a criterion movie so maybe I'm looking too much into meaning behind things that are just there.

     

    The Lord's supper pose the paupers make for the photo that never happens is very amusing, but I wonder if one of the points is to show how not only are they rascals but actually go so far as to disrespect Viridiana and her beliefs.  They're just playing along to get a free ride so to speak.  When faced with the idea of working around the property they aren't particular receptive.  It reminds me of this bible verse, which I guess would be pretty appropriate here because of the content of the film...

     

    [2Th 3:10-11 NASB]

     

    10 For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either. 11 For we hear that some among you are leading an undisciplined life, doing no work at all, but acting like busybodies.

     

    I know nothing about the director so I have no idea if he's trying to make a point along these lines or not.


  10. I thought this was a solid film with a completely depressing message.  Viridiana is objectified, drugged, taken advantage of, and nearly raped.  In the end she loses her faith and throws in the towel.  The ending has a "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" feeling.  Jorge tried to defend her at the end, but he's still a sleazy womanizer (a cat pouncing on a rat?) so her ending up with him (and being shared?) is really just the least terrible of the possible endings she could have had in this movie.

     

    I found the film to be surprisingly compelling (I haven't seen any other work of this director), and the dialogue was particularly sharp.  Some of the paupers said some strange things.... "All rich men have asthma." (what?)  The movie felt like it was always moving forward even when not much was actually going on.

     

    The first act of the film is quite creepy, but then it becomes nearly slapstick for a while before becoming intensely carnal.  It really made me feel that Viridiana was blind to the darkness inside of people.  I'm not sure if that's the overall message of the film, however.

     

    Sad flick!


  11. I was super excited about the New Rainbow Six until I found out it will most likely be multi-player only.

     

    I would love a L4D style co-op rainbow six, they used to do this sort of thing with the older games.

     

    Good news, everyone!  They have confirmed there will be a solo campaign (probably with co-op).  They have just chosen not to unveil it yet.


  12. FC3 is just easier for people to get into and easier = wider market.  A lot of people got frustrated with the jamming guns in FC2, even though it was the coolest mechanic.  FC2 is just frustrating to a lot of people.

     

    Then again.... so is Dark Souls and that game is a huge blockbuster (out of nowhere) so go figure.  Maybe FC2 just came out at the wrong time with the wrong push and with terrible multiplayer.


  13. Actually, if it makes you feel any better, I made the exact same mistake last night.  On the What's New section on the PS4 menu It said "INFAMOUS: FIRST LIGHT NOW AVAIL...." and I thought "What!  I thought that was in August!" and I clicked it and it said "....ABLE FOR PRE-ORDER."

     

    So that was fun.


  14. The wait for Half Life 3 wouldn't be so infuriating if it wasn't for that cliffhanger at the end of HL2 Episode 2.  As much as I dig half life I wouldn't be too upset if they decided to never make another one I guess, or letting other people make stuff in the world with different characters.

     

    But I want another Day of Defeat.  Valve can't quit making games entirely!


  15. So would you say it's pretty much the BF3 close quarters maps?

     

    Pretty close to it, I'd say.  There are some really cool ideas, of course.  Buying grappling hooks and zip lines and stuff are super neat.  When I saw those things in the trailer I thought they'd be set up around the map somewhere and you could use them, but you can use them wherever you want.  It's super neat.


  16. I played some of the beta.  It's surprisingly fun.  It's not different enough from battlefield proper to my liking though.  I wish there was a mode where the cops just had pistols and the robbers weren't flying helicopters and using parachutes.  It's a more focused battlefield right now but everything they're doing could easily work with the soldier vs soldier theme.  It's just a bit smaller.  I was hoping they'd take more advantage of the idea of cops and robbers.  But hey, maybe they're big work is going to be in the single player.  We saw in the trailer a copy arresting someone, you can't do that in multi at all.  Imagine if you could?  If the cops had to try super hard to not kill anyone that'd be kind of neat.  But nope.


  17. Tanuk, any of the lego games would be good.  New Super Mario Bros is also a great coop game, but at four they might fall off cliffs too much.  That's not big deal if they're playing solo, because they can take the time to get batter, but if you're playing with them they might just bubble the whole time.  Get Lego Marvel Super Heroes and they can run around and die and it won't matter while you can actually accomplish things with Iron Man if they take too long.


  18. I didn't think there was dlc yet.  First Light doesn't come out until August.

     

    I got all the trophies in this game over the weekend and that's the first time I've ever bothered to get all of those things for a game before.  It's a good solid game, but the complaints against it aren't really untrue either.

     

    The sad thing is that it's a superhero game with open level design, but it's not really much of an open world game.  There's nothing to "do" in the world.  You can't play around with it like it's a toy.  Kind of how I felt about AC games.  In GTA you can fool around and do whatever but in AC and Infamous games you do your missions and nothing else really.  Scouring the city for collectibles is a fun thing to do if you're into that but it doesn't really justify a giant open world city.