Mr W Phallus

Final Destination 5. I've never cringed so much in my entire life. The laser eye surgery scene was the first time I've ever had to cover my face with my hand an peek through the cracks whilst watching a film. It was glorious.

Sounds more like Battra's area of expertise, but two clichés to get you started would be Metropolis and The General. I haven't seen the former and it's a long time since I've seen the latter, but you can't really go wrong with those two. Make sure you look out for the recent restoration of Metropolis, because they recently rediscovered an original print of the film which had a lot of scenes that had previously been lost.

http://www.futilitycloset.com/2011/09/05/borrowed-blessing/

I guess the closest thing I have to a comfort game is probably TF2. :/ I really don't replay single player game very often. Case in point, I often refer to KOTOR as my favourite ever game, and yet I only just started my second playthrough yesterday. Actually, another one would be 007: Nightfire, I guess, for which I dig out my old xbox every time a certain friend is round. But again it's a multiplayer game so it's not quite the same.

I don't know how popular Charlie Brooker is outside of the UK but his Newswipe series is a spot on analysis of how TV journalism in particular works. I don't think he ever mentions video games specifically on Newswipe but he uses Haiti as an example of how the news will dramatise everything, their main tools to do so being exaggeration and negativity. After all, a report on how video games are fine, wouldn't be very interesting. Also Mark Kermode makes a good point about the whole issue:

I looked for the hanging scene from Once Upon a Time in the West earlier but couldn't find it on youtube. Edit: Ok that was actually kinda easy to find:

They certainly have some serious entitlement issues. Video games are finally shaking off the stigma that they are immature, if only the industry itself could follow suit.

The other week I read a book called 'Gun, With Occasional Music' by Jonathan Lethem. He takes a noir detective story and drops it into a sci-fi setting. To be honest I can't think of a better description than the cover quote from Newsweek: 'Marries Chandler's style and Philip K. Dick's vision'. It's all very post-modern, but in a good way. In a really great way, in fact.

Pretty much every scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is worthy of this thread if you ask me, but I'll limit myself to the one for now. I presume it goes without saying there are going to be spoilers in this thread? And how's about the best scene in True Romance? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR8WjPEjpVg I could sit here posting videos all day so I'm just going to leave it at that.

I was actually just about to ask for links to all this stuff: Anyway, welcome, and as long as any contrariness on your part is well thought out and reasoned, I for one look forward to reading your posts.

Man I hate hate gyms. I've always found gym exercise to be unbearably inane. It's exercise for the sake of exercise, setting yourself arbitrary goals and staring at a tiny screen trying to make a certain number appear. It doesn't help that the kind of people who frequented my school gym tended to be all physical prowess, no personality. I haven't set foot inside a gym or fitness centre since leaving school. I really should though, since after a year of no exercise the sports I decided to take up were surfing and climbing - neither of which are very easy to maintain whilst at uni.

Erm, Victorian era please. Sword in a cane, bad ass top hat, Jack-the-Ripper as a Templar, Fagin as the head of the thieves guild, Nancy as the head of the courtesans. Someone make me this game now! Edit: Also you seem to be somewhat narrowly limiting it to an American descendent Atom.

So no hint of allies yet for Halo 4? Could be one lonely game. It was always a sad moment for me when the last marine died and I was left on my own again.

HH if I vote up any more of your posts I think it qualifies as a man crush. But damn you, you stole my Tamagotchi idea. D:

I'm not going to go over all the issues I had with the article again ( http://forum.pressxordie.com/index.php?showtopic=534&view=findpost&p=60951 ) but the reason I found the Gizmodo AU follow-up article so offensive (beyond it's basic content) is because the tactics behind it are even more sly and underhand. Clearly someone has cottoned on to the idea that if there's one thing internet dwellers like as much as getting worked up over a stupid article, it's reading other articles that trash the original stupid article. Furthermore, by providing a link in the follow-up article to the original article, you're increasing your chances of getting new page views for the original article, in case people missed it the first time round. Btw, linking to imgur instead of the original article is a great way of avoiding feeding the Gawker trolls.

To be honest I don't think much of that article either. The first thing to say is it's a pretty pointless article, since any valid points she makes go without saying, so all she is doing is riding in on her high horse and asking everyone to pat it and tell her how lovely and tall it is. My biggest objection is to this paragraph however: The opening sentence here is a far greater leap in reasoning than any made in the original article. I was drunk last night. Drunk enough that for a laugh my fellows drunks and I sent semi-abusive messages to a friend on facebook chat and found it pretty hilarious. But despite being in a slightly more silly mood than normal I could still have consumed more alcohol and remained coherent, and I was a hell of long way from 'falling all over the place' and looking stupid. 'I would have gone out of my way to ask him about it rather than make nasty assumptions about him online' the writer assures us, having just taken the word 'drunk' and assuming the absolute worst possible meaning, despite strong evidence to the contrary - who the hell could sign up to a dating website when they can't even stand up properly? But as if making slanderous remarks about the first writer's drinking habits wasn't enough, she then comes out with this beauty: 'or that you might have even deliberately got yourself drunk'. Yep that's right, the first writer is a terrible person because she deliberately got drunk. Leaving aside the fact that she is most definitely in the minority if she has never purposefully been drunk before, the whole point of her article is that she is criticising someone else for judging a person based on a single lifestyle choice. It's fine, however, for her to make the exact same kind of judgement, because look at how high her horse is. Moving further through the article, she proceeds to dish out a few backhanded insults of her own about the poor World Champ. Erm I'm sorry, but based on a very vague description of you I've decided you are not manly and probably don't look good (if you do you must have put a lot of effort in). Hey but I don't mind patronising being friends with nerds like you! Having made clear that she probably wouldn't be sexually attracted to World Champ, and not quite happy with the levels of hypocrisy in the article so far, she concludes her article about how women can be sexual predators too by asking out the poor, written-off-as-a-love-interest chap on a date. You know the first article was mildly offensive, but the second one offends me so much more.

Hmm, they'd have to come up with some actually good gameplay for Desmond, I guess. I don't mind playing lots of different ancestors, each small cog in the grand scheme of things, but I agree as far as Desmond's gameplay goes. I also thought the sections where you actually use the Apple in Brotherhood were the worst parts of the game. In fact, from discovering the Apple onwards, I thought the missions were pretty rubbish.

I love uni, don't get me wrong, but one thing that is kinda bad is that we get post grads as seminar tutors (at least we did last year). Now one guy I had last term was a really good, he clearly new his stuff and he knew how to lead a productive seminar and get some constructive discussion out of english lit students. Other post grads have been terrible, one was just generally socially awkward - how he ever thought he could manage a seminar is beyond me - another was a really hot girl, but she spoke so quietly in a thick Spanish accent and the way she took the seminar was just ask a question, wait for someone to give a pre-determined answer, that the seminars were as rubbish as the socially awkward guy. Considering the amount it costs to go to university, you kinda expect some decent tuition. I just pity the people who are applying in the UK next year.

I dunno the talk boy certainly looks cooler.

Catgirls? Actually on topic: True Romance (the script) > True Romance (the film)

You didn'ta care? But it'sa him: Mario! Admittedly one of the best lines ever included in a video game, unfortunately for all the wrong reasons.

*looks at laptop specs* *weeps*

Hmm well you can sort of fit the major plot points of Desmond's story so far onto the Star Wars template, the divisions between games are just in the wrong places. Really it should go something like this: 1. Desmond is held captive at Abstergo, he discovers he has special ancestry and has inherited a special power: 'eagle vision'. He is rescued by Lucy, who takes him to meet the plucky underdog good guy rebel team. Yay, everyone is happy we all celebrate. 2. Shit, the plucky underdog good guy rebel team's hideout on Hoth has been discovered, they narrowly escape. Things start to get a bit better, Desmond hones his powers (the bleeding effect). The team make an important discovery and head to cloud city Rome. Oh snap! Stabby stabby. Everything goes down the shitter and we're left with more problems than we began with. 3. Desmond, presumably, saves the world. I couldn't even begin to start mapping out Altair and Ezio's stories. The first part of the above trilogy is really lacking compared to the increased scope of the later games. Basically it's bullshit because they've played their 'oh no' trump card for part two already and yet supposedly part two isn't done yet. It does? The actual story is simple and self-contained, it just lacks a bit of exposition at the start to give you a reason to care about the characters, but even then I can't see it making much difference. Mario's death was hardly emotional even having played ACII.

I'd probably change it depending on who I was talking to. With people who don't really play video games but did in their childhood, I'd probably talk about the games they played as kids as retro which could even stretch into PS2 days, but with people who are a bit more knowledgeable I'd probably move further back into the 16-Bit era. I like GunFlame's line of reasoning though. If we were to standardise retro I'd go with that.

Still counting down.