Mr W Phallus

Don't you think that's a personal opinion? I HATED the touch controls in Phantom hourglass. They were so bad I couldn't even play the game. I dunno, I mean surely the fact that people considered the controls to work fine proves that they did work, whereas the problems you had with them could simply be because you're not very good at the game. I mean just because I suck at fighting games, doesn't mean that the controls themselves suck, you just have to master them. I'm not saying this is definitely the case; I can't say I thought the 100% touch controls were especially well done, but I certainly don't remember them ever detracting from my enjoyment of the game.

Much agreed. If I spend time making a lengthy post I'm perfectly happy for someone with the exact opposite opinion to me to refute every single point I make using sound reasoning, but when people use the 'agree to disagree' subjectivity defence without defending their point of view, ignore everything I said or worse of all ignore almost everything I said but nitpick at one minor point which is supposed to undermine my entire argument (often combining this with the subjectivity defence) then I want to punch them so hard in the virtual face it hurts them in real life. Even though I know that any other intelligent internet goers will see them for the morons they are there's no guarantee that these intelligent people will be the ones reading the thread/post/whatever-it-is.

Robin Williams named is daughter after Princess Zelda? What a legend.

Crunchy peanut butter, strawberry jam and banana. Oh and it's better on toast (or on a crumpet or pikelet) than it is in a sandwich.

Well jam, jelly, marmalade, chutney fruit curd etc. are all types of (fruit) preserve. It was my impression that Americans would refer to actual jam as jelly, for example in a PBJ sandwich, would you but in what us Brits would call jam or do you actually tend to use jelly? Oh and do you differentiate between the two types of jelly (as in jelly you would have for desert/pudding (eg. strawberry jelly) and jelly you would have with say roast meat (eg. redcurrant jelly)?

To tell the truth I didn't finish the Lone Wolf mission, it was 3am or some stupid time like that and I wanted to get to bed. :3 But the whole game should really have been like that mission, I wanted the game to feel hopeless and end on a downer but in the end it felt like I'd achieved too much and died saving the day.

I totally agree about the story, before Reach came out they built it up like they were going to really capture the gravitas of an entire planet being destroyed with the 'Remember Reach' and 'From the beginning, you know the end' slogans. When it came to the actual story there wasn't much sense of this at all.

I completely stormed through the Halo: Reach campaign in a day and I can't say it left much of a lasting impression on me, having said that you seem to be overlooking some of the best point of the Halo games in general (and maybe this is just because of Reach's faults more than anything). Halo has a lot of shooting, sure, but as other people have pointed out it is a first person SHOOTER. Play Mario and expect to jump about a lot, play a racing game and expect to drive a lot, play a JRPG and expect to grind a lot... and so on. Having said that, as far as first person shooters go there's more variety than you could expect from, say CoD. The fact the weaponry is sci-fi, rather than based on real contempory (or even more restrictively, historical) weapons means there is a lot of variety to the types of weaponry; from standard human ballistic weaponry to plasma weapons, the needler(s), even the unique plasma sword and gravity hammer. Already the gameplay is pretty varied compared to your usual FPS arsenal. Next is the fact you didn't mention driving at all. Now I'm struggling to remember any real stand-out moments of driving in Reach (other than the space dogfight) so again it could be that it's simply not the best game to flaunt the series' strengths, but the driving in Halo has always been incredibly satisfying. Probably the best example for this would be the Halo level of Halo:CE; plenty of open space to bomb about in and relatively few enemies, the simply control scheme was a revelation the first time you got to that level. The zoo level of Halo:ODST was also particularly enjoyable, especially when you manage to do a perfect run through the whole level. And as far as driving goes there are a lot of levels throughout the Halo series where you barely (if at all) have to get out the vehicle. I'm quite surprised you found the music generic, once again no particular moments in Reach come to mind, but the Halo music has always been great. From the eerie monks accompanying Halo:CE's title screen to the most epic battle music. Halo:ODST has the best example of the composer (Marty is it?) mixing things up with everything form soft jazz to a screaming guitar solo during one of the most dramatic set pieces. But you have to remember, and this goes for complaints about any aspect of Halo being generic, the first game came out 10 years ago, launched the boom of the console FPS (and of widespread console gaming in general), and is generally one of most influential games ever made. Even though you had never played a Halo game before Reach , as a 'gamer' and a frequenter of gaming sites the Halo franchise must be as familiar as, say Mario 64 is to me even though I've only ever played it myself for a couple of minutes at most. It's simply ingrained onto the collective gaming consciousness. So if Halo feels generic, how much of that is because of the influence Halo has had on gaming, and the length of time it has been around as a series? It would be like calling Star Wars generic because of all the Sci-Fi that has been influenced by it's aesthetic. Finally, I get the impression you haven't played the multiplayer at all - you didn't mention it anyway - and whilst I appreciate that some people prefer playing single player to multiplayer, I think you really have to play the Halo multiplayer to understand the game's appeal. I found Halo 3 to be somewhat dissapointing; disappointing, that was, until I later got xbox live and discovered the multiplayer, which is definitely up there in my top 5 multiplayer games of all time. Not really a defence of Reach, then, but the Halo series in general. I think if you really want to know what Halo is all about, you have to play the original. To be honest as the campaigns got more 'epic' they got less satisfying for me, which is one of the things I enjoyed most about Halo:ODST, it brought the action down to a much smaller, more personal scale. So I'd recommend playing Halo:CE, Halo 2 (for the parallel stories which I really enjoyed, as well as the introduction of dual wielding and plasma swords) and Halo:ODST for taking the series in interesting new directions (plus it comes with the best part of Halo 3; the multiplayer).

I love Stewart Lee.

They have a microphone to record the sound. That thing on the wooden pole. (I haven't seen the actual movie, just the trailers, so I guess it's not impossible for them to have had sound playing when only the video footage could have been playing but I really doubt they would make that mistake).

Nothing. Basically, he's just allowing himself to charge for post-release DLC. And whilst I don't agree with charging for DLC (with the exception of decent multiplayer map packs to spice up a game that has been out for some time), that's no more evil than every other game developer out there other than Valve.

Definitely has potential. Have they said how many of the new controllers can be used at once?

If you liked Contracts, you should see if you can get the first one going. Looks pretty dated, but a few of the Contracts missions are re-vamped from the original but missing some details and areas that were in the original. I played the first one yeeeeeeears ago. Got to the mission with the jaguar in the jungle, but my save got wiped for some reason and I never bothered playing again. I lost all my equipment on the previous mission so I just ran straight past the jaguar and managed to get past with a light mauling. Then I got stuck on the next mission with no equipment again.

I bought Codename 47, Silent Assassin and Blood Money when they were on Steam sale a while ago, but only played the first so far (I've played demos of a Silent Assassin and Blood Money before). It's a great game but I stopped playing because it's bloody hard. I'll definitely go back to it at some point, and I'm keeping an eye on the new one.

That makes sense... but I thought we've been hiding everything behind tags regardless, even if it happened in already-aired eps. That's the problem, everything is in spoilers (which obviously it should be) but atm we none book reading plebs have no way of telling book and TV spoilers apart, so we have to avoid all spoilers. It looks like people (Chewblaha anyway) have started marking them, though, so it's all good.

I think Faiblesse means that he is up to date with the TV show - so he doesn't need to worry about spoilers there - but because he hasn't read the books he doesn't want to inadvertently read something that hasn't yet happened in the show. I would also appreciate this.

Quite frankly I think that in terms of knowing what they want, the (media) customer is not always right. The customer is not a game developer. They know very little about balancing a game or level design, they just play a game and know whether they enjoy it or not. The thought process of the average customer (and I admit this is quite a big presumption) goes like this: 'Game X is my favourite game. One thing I really liked about Game X was feature Y, therefore any other game with feature Y will also be great.' One of the biggest problems of game design (and also Hollywood film-making) is that big companies, scared of taking big risks, revert to the same logic as the customer. 'Game X was lauded by critics and loved by the public. Game X had Feature Y and therefore if our game has Feature Y it will also be well received.' The biggest problem with this thinking is that it is incredibly reductive. The quality of a game is the sum of all it's parts. You can't just cherry pick the features of a good game that people talk about the most and expect those features to works just as well outside of the context of the original game. Another problem with listening to fans is that fans rarely come up with anything new. But fans are always asking for the same old thing, right? How many times do we hear people asking for a remake or re-release of FFVII and Ocarina of Time? Surely fans don't want anything new, they just want what they already like? Well it's easy to see why game developers might think this, but the reason fans ask for things they are familiar with is because they don't know the first thing about making games. They're not experts on game design, the developers are. Most of them probably aren't even very creative. They're just no good at coming up with new ideas themselves. That's not to say fans can't come up with good, original ideas, just that on average they're not going to have the experience, know-how or creativity to do anything other than point to things they already like. I think that Valve are the perfect example to demonstrate that the point that fans don't actually know what they want. When was the last time Valve let fans dictate a decision for them? Every single time gamers discuss Valve someone will bring up Ep 3. But instead of pandering to the fans, they decided to bring us other great games such as L4D and Portal 2. Remember the L4D2 boycott? From Wikipedia: Even the decisions they make that don't provoke controversy are highly unpredictable; turning the Portal sequel into a full length game, abandoning the FPS genre to make DOTA 2 and so on. Despite this they are one of the most popular and successful gaming companies out there. At the end of the day who would you trust to design a bridge, an engineer or someone who has crossed a lot of bridges?

Well I'll start of by saying that one thing I don't like about the trailer is the tag line: 'The Feel Bad Movie of Christmas'. It feels too exploitative considering the books are all about the abuse of women, and in that sense are full of male guilt. Plus 'of Christmas' just sounds weird, they should at least gone with 'of the winter' or 'of the year'. Will it be a major departure from the originals? Well I don't know about major, but if you're condensing ~600 pages into a film you have to change the pacing drastically to make it work. Having said that, the slow, inexorable tracking shot down the snowy drive gives a nice sense of tension and pace, whilst the smash cuts add excitement and drama whilst ramping up the tension even more. I also hope it'll be quite a departure from the Swedish films, stylistically at least, otherwise what is the point of remaking the film at all? Oh I really like the music, too. But above all, there is one reason why I have faith in this film, had the trailer been good or not, and that's because it's a film by David Fincher.

Well yeh, but isn't speculation the whole point of a trailer thread?

It would have been even better if the replies had all said 'No Steven, that's a stupid idea and it would never happen'.

I appreciate that you love smart apes, but if anything that just gives you more reason to be angry/annoyed/frustrated or to outright dislike a film which takes a 'cool' premise (intelligent apes taking over the world) and ruins it by turning it into a bad film. Personally I'm a big Batman fan - but I don't defend Batman and Robin (the film) just because I like the characters and the concept. It's a shit film regardless. Now we're wandering into opinion territory, and obviously it is entirely possible for one person to enjoy a film and for another person not to, and obviously we can't go around saying who is right or wrong. Did I state my opinion as fact in my post? Well, yes, just like you stated your opinion as fact in your original post. We don't go around saying 'in my opinion' every time we discuss a subjective matter because there's no need. But did I entirely discounted your opinion? No. In fact I took the time to give a counter-point for each and every point you made in favour of the film. To clarify my statements further, I didn't say the CGI looks bad, I said it was impressive. Unfortunately it sits right slap bang at the bottom of the uncanny valley. It gets so close to realistic, but the whole time you are watching you are aware it's CGI and this - and I would have thought most people would agree here - detracts from the viewing experience. It certainly does for me anyway. And that bring me on to my next point. The problem with Caesar is not the character itself (although I have my suspicions that the character arc will be badly written, but that's an entirely different matter) but the fact he is completely CGI. It's kind of hard to sympathise with the character when it is so painfully and constantly obvious they are a computer animation super imposed into the film, not an actual physical presence. It's just not the same as watching a real person or animal, or even a puppet. Actors: like I said You rate the actors, I don't particularly. That's the only point I was making. And as for production values, if you can name me one movie that is bad for the single reason that it has bad production values, I'll concede that you are right on that one. Nope, can't think of anything similar... But as little imagination as it takes to say 'let's make a film that's already been made but change bits', that wasn't all that I was talking about when I mentioned a lack of originality and creativity. I was talking about the fact that when you watch the trailer it all feels so familiar (and I haven't even seen Conquest of the Planet of the Apes). The archetypal characters, the generic score, the 'flavour of the month' casting...the single interesting shot in the trailer was the one where the leaves are falling from the trees, and even then it promises more than it delivers. I'm not going to apologise for the tone of my original post, because quite frankly what you said about 50/50 was stupid (and yes that is just an opinion), and admitting to trolling then complaining about me being rude in the same post seems a lot like you're trying to have your cake and eat it. Finally, I'd just like to point out that this is just me expressing my opinion somewhat forcefully, I'm not trying to particularly offensive or aggressive and there's certainly nothing personal about my comments...I just disagree with your opinions about films.

Was a good episode, if a bit heavy on the In Media Res beginning. Which wasn't helped by the fact I missed a little bit of the very beginning. Have to say I was a little disappointed by the River reveal, it seemed a bit obvious and it's also kinda creepy... Next episode is called Let's Kill Hitler, not entirely sure how that follows on from the last episode but more sensationalism will abound I'm sure. I liked how they incorporated the Cybermen, it acknowledges them as a classic enemy but doesn't waste a whole episode in doing so. They should do a similar thing with the Daleks (but make them a lot less of a push-over than the Cybermen were in this one).

Wow. There's a sequence of words I never thought I'd see. Are you saying that the big Hollywood studios a) are respectable b] have value (other than the occasional one off) and c) are under any kind of threat from an indie movie? And exactly how does a movie featuring Seth Rogen (one of the most over-cast comedy actors in Hollywood at the moment) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (star of hit blockbuster Inception (#9 on IMDB's top 250 list, #25 on IMDB's top grossing list) and soon to star in the sequel to The Dark Knight (#10 on IMDB's top 250 list, #7 on IMDB's top grossing list)) in any way shape or form qualify as a 'hipster' movie, i.e. a movie that consciously rejects the mainstream, or popularity in general. As for Rise of the Planet of the Apes Should we start with the ridiculous premise and move on from there? An illogic plot doesn't qualify for 'cool' in my eyes. High production values? That means shit all for the quality of the movie, how often do we talk about how good graphics don't make a good game? The CGI is impressive, sure, but that doesn't mean it looks good or in any way convincing, and that doesn't give me much faith for a emotional sub-plot where I'm supposed to sympathise with a CGI ape. Speaking of that sub-plot, it seems hackneyed and contrived, especially in a movie which was clearly pitched as MOTHERFUCKING APES FUCKING SHIT UP. A-List actors? Depends on your definition of A-List I suppose; currently hyped up, certainly, Franco especially, but the only person who I would say I think particularly highly of is Andy Serkis. Hmm, what else, the direction looks bland, the writing cliched, neither Director nor Writers have done anything of note...frankly I don't see how it possibly COULD look good. If you think the premise is interesting just watch The Planet of the Apes, and I hope to god you realise I'm not talking about the Tim Burton version. Oh that's right, RotPotA drags the name of a great film through shit, further damaging the original's already tarnished public image. Fuck movies like that, clogging up the cinema, devaluing respectable independent films and wringing the last vestiges of originality and creativity out of the Hollywood machine which brought us such recent classics as The Hangover 2: The Same Shit All Over Again But More Offensive and, well we have a thread for this.

Beast aka Dr. Henry Philip "Hank" McCoy aka Henry the Behoover.

Waaaaait a minute...