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Which episode did Dan say he realized that maybe his path through college was a bit BS? I listen quite frequently but never caught that bit.

'Advise' is the verb 'advice' is the noun (you probably know but I couldn't help it because you starred the word and everything :P)

I watched Starship Troopers for the first time in ages, I liked it way more than I was expecting. At times it feels like maybe it's being too in your face about mocking propaganda, but then some people didn't get it so I guess not. Some people seem to think it's bad, others that it's so bad that it's good and others still dislike it for being so different from the book (I think it mocks the book), but I think it works both as a fun action movie and as an anti-fascist piece. That was also part of the point I think, to make people watch the movie without a critical eye, not realising they're being subverted. I'm not sure if would have been better with a 'good' cast or not, I think the soap opera cast fits well with the cheesy tone. It's an insanely quotable movie. Anyway, I think it's brilliant. edit: oh also, I think some of the VFX hold up extremely well. There are a few CGI scenes that look dated, but for the most part it's good and the miniatures are amazing.

I watched the second one recently too and I liked it slightly less than the first one, which unlike other people I didn't go completely crazy for. The biggest problem I have is that the movie lacks an identity beyond trying to re-create what made the first one stand out. Laurence Fishburne was bad, and the Italian guy was so-so. The action scenes are the best part of the movie, but they feel unjustified. In the first one it's kind of a joke, that he goes on this murderous rampage over a dog. In the sequel they try to create a more serious motivation, but it falls flat and at the end he becomes persona non grata anyway so it was all for naught.

Ben vs shooters:

Aha I see what you're saying about the clipping. I had forgotten it was that way in E.YE. but for me it's not something bad, I kinda like games where the guns have a more physical presence and you don't shoot straight out of your camera. Depends on the game though of course, it'd be terrible in Quake.

Cool that you tried it. I don't think your experience is atypical, which is why it didn't review super well especially with sites like IGN, but there is a lot of good stuff about the game as well. Regarding the hit detection issues, I didn't experience any of that myself so I'm not sure what's going on there. The weapon selection is like that for the entire game, it's not something where you find weapons in the environment or loot them off enemies, although they are gated in different ways. The combat, if you get into it, is actually one of the strongest parts of the game. If you find it difficult on easy I think you can tweak a lot of the difficulty options manually, like detection range and reaction time of enemies and so on. Also, I will say that the "pre-game" area as you call it does have a purpose, but actually unravelling the full story is a bit of a Dark Souls like endeavour. I'll counter your old review with one from this year

I'll grab it for you but I'll wait to see if there's a sale, it was a mid 2011 game so you've got about a dozen games to go before anyway. There's both a lot of good and bad things about it, but it'd be one of the most unique game on the list and I think it's at least worth giving a try even though there's a good chance you might bounce off it. It has a bit of a learning curve, which isn't helped by the way it tutorialises or the poor (but charming) translation.

Btw, have you thought about adding E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy to the list? It has some RPG elements but I'd say that it's primarily a shooter.

I might be mistaken, but I think simply changing the difficulty changes the damage for both the player and enemies, no mod needed.

I don't have time to write a proper post, but I'm glad you're staying away from mods, a lot of them alter the balance of the game too drastically. My recommendation for these games is to turn off the crosshair, which for me helps a lot with the immersion (try it!). The default crosshair and the range indicator feel so out of place. Also, if you think you're bouncing off it, I would say to give it at least until the first underground area, maybe even the second. Those are the highlights of the game I think.

I was thinking primarily about all the weird things that pop out of Lucas' imagination. When those ideas turn out well they're one of Star Wars' greatest strengths, but when they're bad they can be insufferable. Just on Tatooine you have Jawas, the Tuskan Raiders, all the weird creatures in the cantina and so on. Hell, even Chewbaka. I think all of that stuff walks a fine line, and when we get to the Ewoks in RotJ that line is crossed. It's not surprising to me that the same mind that gave us the Ewoks also gave us the Gungans. I find RotJ to watch nowadays, not just because of Endor but also because of the opening act set in Jabba's palace, which is also filled with Lucas' indulgences. The problem is that he doesn't know how to tell the good ideas from the bad ones. Of course the problems with the prequels run deeper than the goofy creature designs, but it's what I think of first.

I see what you mean but I'm not sure I agree. Well, with your second point I do because the real world sections are definitely weaker. The story is about Neo's journey to get to that point, about gradually waking up. There are at least four scenes in the movie that begin with him waking up. I actually prefer it over the typical action movie story, because the story isn't about the protagonist defeating some bad guy, it's just about his character growth. Anyway, that's not why I think it's a fantastic movie. Although it is of course subjective, I find the aesthetics of it to be great. It's a cooler version of the 90's that never was. More importantly I think it's edited and paced extremely well. As an example, the way they cut from the night club scene to Neo waking up. First they fade almost seamlessly between two quite different songs, and then they make the alarm clock sound like it's part of Mindfields and cut perfectly into Neo oversleeping. The whole movie is filled with that level of attention to detail. I also like that it's very lean, there's almost nothing I would cut from it. The density of scenes that will stick in your mind crazily high. It's famous for its action sequences, but the non-action scenes are just as memorable, if not more. A lot of movies have one scene that stand out and that people remember, but The Matrix has a dozen of them. Even just the opening sequence is better than most action movies. That's my perception at least. Now it's not my favourite movie of all time or anything, but I think it's probably better than most of my favourite movies. How badly they screwed up everything that followed is more baffling to me than even George Lucas' crap, because you can see hints of his insanity even in A New Hope. The Wachowskis on the other hand went from making something legitimately great to something with no trace of that greatness.

I meant the Daniel Craig one. I've never seen the 60's one actually

I was in the mood to re-watch The Matrix and I enjoyed it quite a bit, it holds up very well. Then I made the mistake of deciding to re-watch the sequels as well, even though I never liked them to begin with. Even within the first minute of Reloaded you can tell that they're going in the first direction, because they spend a full minute on the masturbatory green 'matrix effect'. They turned what was a cool scene transition into pointless effects wankery, it's horrible. Aside from that one shot of trinity landing in front of the exploding building I don't particularly care for the opening. It's gets worse though, as the movie spends a quarter of its entire run time on characters we don't and won't care about, in a boring location with utterly uninteresting dialogue. I know that it's setup for the 3rd movie, but it's such a drag. Some of the fight scene are alright. In general I think they look too floaty because of all the wire work, but it's fine I guess. It's just never particularly exhilarating. I was expecting to like Revolutions even less, because that's how I remembered it, but somehow it was more watchable. Most of it takes places in the real word, a setting I simply do not care for, but at least there are some stakes there. The hovercraft chase scene, ripped straight from RotJ, is more exciting than all the martial arts nonsense in Reloaded. That said, I think this movie is a disaster as well because I am not the least bit interested in the world they're portraying. I would say that the only good things from the first movie that the sequels retain are the costume designs and the music. Even as silly as they get, I still love the leather fetish costume designs they have. I also watched some other stuff a while ago but I never have time to post: Casino Royale, which I hadn't seen since it first came out. I was quite astonished how well this movie held up, it was better than I remembered. I would probably have to say that it's my favourite bond movie, and maybe the only one that I think is legitimately great. Infinitely better than what came after. Then I watched both Kill Bill movies. I'd seen them a long time ago and didn't particularly enjoy them, but I saw some random scene on YouTube that was good and decided to re-watch them. I still don't understand the appeal to be honest, I know that people love them. I sort of feel that way about Tarantino in general though. Pulp Fiction is the only movie of his that I like, but I have a hard time even with that one sometimes. Even when he isn't a literal self insert in a movie, the dialogue often feels like he is. I don't want to hear characters talking like they're Tarantino, I want them to talk like they're their own characters. The foot massage thing, or the uncomfortable silences thing, that to me comes off like Tarantino talking directly through the characters. And I get that writers do that, but they should obfuscate it more. Anyway, Kill Bill doesn't have that problem, but it also doesn't have very interesting dialogue. I think a lot of it is shot well, but beyond that I don't get what people think makes these movies exceptional.

That jeep chase sequence is very tough, it's not a bad place to stop. I want to mention one of the more ridiculous things the game throws at you later on though. You get captured, then thrown out of a helicopter. All your weapons are taken away, so all you have is an M4 with 30 bullets on some dead guy close to where you land. Right away there is one of those leaping trigens charging at you, which takes almost all your ammo. You then have to get through an island that is completely infested with trigens, it's like the game is taunting you to give up. It actually devolves even further, but that particular moment stood out to me.

I've been listening to a bit of Yngwie recently. A lot of shredding gets, in my opinion, rightfully picked on for being soulless, but these performances are anything but:

I did, that was strange timing.

I didn't mean to imply it was dramatically better than anything else in the game, but it was a level that I still remember quite well ~10 years later. I enjoyed the openness of it. Sure, a lot of the levels are quite open, but I think that one takes it further. I also have soft spot for sniping. edit: oh you just updated haha yeah the Heli fight is dumb, and there's more where that came from.

Is this being made by Funcom? Are the still around?

I remember mission 11, it's outdoors at night yeah? You're right, that is around the time where they start going a bit nuts with the mutants. That level in particular has a lot of Fat Boys since it does the whole Forget about Freeman thing of the military being overrun. Even as someone who likes the game I'd say you've seen most of the best of what it has to offer. I will say that mission 14 was one of the most memorable levels for me, but it's not above and beyond some of the good early levels. There is also some masochistic fun in seeing the absurd scenarios they concoct towards the end.

Regarding the ludology / narratology debate, I know that Jake called out more or less what I'm about to mention as an example of something that doesn't work, but I think it did work. There are two examples from the original Deus Ex that come to mind for me. The first one is when you are on the 747 and are told to execute Juan Lebedev. You have the choice to do it or not, because if you do nothing Anna Navarre will execute him in your stead. However, you can also choose to fight her in order to stop her from killing him. The second example is when you meet Paul in his apartment in Hell's Kitchen, and he's dying from the kill switch. He tells you sneak out through the window and leave him there, as he's too weak to go with you. If you stay with him and fight your way out it's actually possible to save his life. Now of course both of these examples involve bespoke content, but the reason I think they work is because the game never tells you that you have these choices. It is the general systemic nature of the game that encourages you to explore what is and isn't possible. In some cases it leads to unique systemic outcomes, and in other cases to unique narrative outcomes.

There is one memorable part of the game later. You get captured one more time right as you're about to make your escape, and get put in this cryo sleep facility where they wake you up one minute per day for 'exercise', then put you to sleep. It's a bit unsettling actually, because it will take you several days to figure out how to get out of there even though it's only a few minutes of gameplay. You're playing a pretty bad person, but even so the whole thing feels really inhumane. As for the trigens, I kinda like them too actually. Well, I think they're dumb looking, but a lot of people seem to think they ruin the game and I don't.

I have to admit I'm a little bummed you won't get to see the rest of Butcher Bay, but oh well. Far Cry is a cool game too. I think I like it the most out of Crytek's games. Even the bits that people rag on I find quite enjoyable. Which difficulty are you playing on? Far Cry is known for being quite challenging even on the default difficulty. The game keeps escalating, and it's not a short campaign either. It can be a bit glitchy, but it's possible to quick save through the console btw. I've only played through this game once, and I was cocky enough to pick the 'realistic' setting. It's by far the most difficult shooter campaign I've played, I think it took me over 40 hours to finish. It was interesting though, because there are some truly fiercesome enemies and at some point it starts to resemble a survival horror game more than anything else. You're running around with rocket launchers and assault rifles, yet you still feel disempowered. I don't want to jinx it but I'd be very surprised if you finished it in some ways it's a test of how much bullshit you can put up with. When you think it couldn't possibly get any worse, it does, time and time again haha. It's pretty lovable for that actually. Man I want to replay this game some time.

I have to whine a bit... This is petty and bothers me more than it should. Youtubers who record pre-written videos, but make horrible English mistakes in them. Native English speakers specifically, because I cut them less slack. Random 'whoms' where they shouldn't be are a small example of this. In writing I'll let it slide, but when it's read aloud from a script it gets under my skin. Often it's much worse though, people will abuse prepositions, put them where they don't belong, use the wrong ones etc. Sometimes they will speak pure gibberish by butchering idioms, replacing certain words seemingly at random. Like I said, I know it's petty but for me it's sometimes distracting to the point where I have to turn off the video. I think it's the fact that these videos are written, recorded and edited that makes it frustrate me so much.