antikewl

Wow. I'd forgotten quite how cold Joan could be.

This was brought to my attention today, and thought Idle Thumbs readers might enjoy it too for its intelligence and wit. It's hosted by IRL married couple Sarah (New Statesman, The Guardian) and Nathan (Playstation Access and various video game and film publications) Ditum, who talk about film, video games, feminism, books… basically all the topics that Idle Thumbs talk about when they get derailed. If you like those bits about the Idle Thumbs podcast you'll probably enjoy this too. http://www.mispronounceditem.com/all-episodes/ Also on iTunes if you're into that. https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-mispronounced-item/id963787949

If SCEE allowed me to press a pre-order button I would be pressing it right now.

MS are keeping mum about specs right now, but: "The holograms did not have very high resolution, and sometimes they were a little dull. Yet they were crisp enough to instantly create the illusion of reality" http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/technology/personaltech/the-microsoft-hololens-a-sensational-vision-of-the-pcs-future.html?_r=0

I have no idea if anyone else is playing this, or able to get onto their servers, but I've created a Driveclub club (a Drive/club/?) called "idlethumbs" if anyone wants to join. There were no sweet thumbs-related logos available so I chose a raccoon in a trucker's hat. Also, it wouldn't let me change the club livery so that's been left as the default for now.

Yeah, I guess that by now every PS+ member should have had a free copy of Driveclub Plus Edition™ and the "Upgrade" terminology would have made sense.

It's available now. It's the first thing you see when you visit https://store.sonyentertainmentnetwork.com/#!/en-gb/home/games Presumably you have to be logged in to see it.

Try waiting about 30 seconds. The web store seems to be really slow at the moment and "buy" buttons seem to load in last after what seems like an age. Incidentally, getting PSN credit from cdkeys and waiting for the 10% off code tomorrow will save you another £3+.

Unlikely. It'd have a release date to sync with the PS+ update, i.e. 3/4 February. Talking of Playstation releases, anyone else in the EU a bit worried that it won't arrive on the 27th? There's been no mention on the EU blog, and their release timings have been pretty awful recently.

It's still in the store. At least, it's there if I click that link above. Definitely worth a £20 though. I've stopped playing for now purely because I found out that I'm absolutely AWFUL at it. I have quite a few friends playing and sharing challenges, all of which I fail to beat. It's definitely me.

Does that previous post say who the killer is? Because if so that should probably be spoiler tagged.

Danielle's mention of the Alien vs Predator thing at Universal's Halloween Horror Nights reminded me of the Alien War attraction at the Trocadero in London in the mid to late 90s, which was pretty much the same kind of thing. Shortly before they ran out of money and closed the whole thing down they had a "members event" thing and I met a whole bunch of people from the cast of the first two movies (none from the third, weirdly, considering it's chiefly British cast), including Al Matthews (Apone), Ricco Ross (Frost) and Veronica Cartright (Lambert from Alien). They all did the attraction too. I still have a photo of me with them all as a dorky Alien fanboy teenager with a ponytail somewhere. Ah, fun times. There's no purpose to this tale, it just brought back a stupid memory.

What's with all the fish? Fish preparation. Fish in the percolator. Fish tie. Actually, I think that's it. Do they symbolise anything, though?

The podcast now seems to be live in iTunes, too.

Hah, that's awesome! I think I only ever caught one episode and never thought to look them up again, despite being a big fan of Look Around You. They seem to be on YouTube too.

This is amazing. Andy Kelly at PC Gamer has compared Alien: Isolation to Alien. Literally. From helmets to corridors. http://www.pcgamer.com/how-authentic-is-alien-isolation/ (Spoilers to both the film and the game, obvs.)

Ah. Well, if you haven't seen Alien, sorry! Also, it's been out for 35 years, so you really have no excuse.

Yeah, I'm playing the full version. It's still up on the store. They just announced on Facebook that they're performing a server update in the next 24 hours and expect to start turning on more of the online features after that. I've definitely noticed an improvement over the last day or so, in that it actually connects sometimes now. Also, weird that they chose to give the India tracks away with PS+ as they're definitely the least good looking. It wasn't until I saw the Scotland tracks (that you won't see if you have the free PS+ version) that it started to live up to its visual hype.

In Aliens they also had weird transparent rubber band strap things around their mouth holes. Perhaps that's also influencing your memory?

Well, I guess that didn't work! If anyone else wants to try to make one, perhaps when the servers are feeling a bit better, feel free. I've been playing for a bit and it seems that the best way to get ahead in a race is to play it like bumper cars on the corners until you're ahead and then just steam it through the rest of the track. I'm pretty sure this isn't how they intended for it to be played. In fact, the conservative "COLLISION DETECTION" penalties pretty much tell me that it's not. Anyone got any suggestions on how to win a race properly?

I know I'm going to be in the minority here, but I'm actually enjoying it. Plays like the original CoD "Classic" console port with low res textures and glitches and clipping, this is true, but I enjoyed that too. Also, I didn't like Borderlands. Is there some kind of specialist that I can see about this?

Is there a place where current sponsor/promo codes are listed? I was about to register a domain and couldn't remember the current hover.com promo code and I can't find my headphones.