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Loved Andor. All the others I've seen have been really bad apart from parts of early Mandalorian. I hope S2 will be as good, but I will at least check out Rotten Tomatoes to temper my expectations if necessary. I've been hesitant about Skeleton Crew. It has kids in it, no? I see enough kids in my daily life ;D

I kept thinking they used a similar police station in the new film as in the game, and I was wrong, but it speaks to how credible and fitting the little world in Telltale's game was.

I remember enjoying Grand Adventures way back. Bought it again for a few bucks from a Steam sale. Maybe I'll play it again one day. I was amused seeing Wallace's voice actor was the same in the film, which is really good too. Better than anything since A Close Shave.

I wouldn't say dystopian fiction attempts to be a warning. A lot of it hasn't been written with the aim of presenting a realistic or likely future, although some of it has. Mostly I see it as commentary on facets of contemporary society. A lot of it deals with corporate culture, the idea that a company has a responsibility to its shareholders but not society and the implications of that, including the dehumanization of its workforce, cybernetics being a literal represantation of that. A Scanner Darkly is mostly a commentary and memoire of drug addiction and the relationship between users and the police, again dehumanization in many forms. The individualism and disconnect between people existed before dystopian fiction and the fiction is an attempt to deal with that, to find an outlet for a bunch of different anxieties. We need more of it because the world is turning to shit while we are trying to smile, raise our kids and avoid thinking about it, resulting in massive cognitive dissonance.

He's got good balance. I couldn't pull that off.

I have an update! Not having paid attention recently, a friend of mine recommended Pentiment and what the heck. I had no idea Obsidian had gone and designed a game just for me. All I've been reading lately has been the Reformation and 16th-17th century politics, granted mostly relating to England. Still, I was stunned and had to buy it. I'm not far into it but seems interesting. They managed to make text appearing on the screen something to watch. I know Toblix likes it because he's played 160 hours of it!

If only... The only game I've touched lately is The Case of the Golden Idol, which has been terrific to play while broadcasting the screen to my brother on Discord. Otherwise I've pretty much stopped gaming altogether. Games take too long and with the kids I've so little time to settle and focus on them. But I feel a loss there. And having an online community I feel a part of.

There's a little part of me that's still shocked and hurt that Idle Thumbs just went away without a proper sendoff or explanation. It's silly but there we are. Taking a wider view, the whole Internet has really gone to shit since Idle Thumbs' hayday. And of course, most things unrelated to the Internet as well. Merry Christmas everybody

Shit. Rogerebert.com gave it four stars, but then rogerbert.com ain't no Roger Ebert. How do you guys feel about the new Blade Runner (which isn't out)? The teaser felt really good to me, but the two thirds of the trailer I saw was the opposite; what I feared, really.

Good bye guys, it's been swell. Thirteen years ago my first post was about cancelling my Psychonauts pre-order, apparently. I can't remember saying or thinking any of the things I wrote back then. I guess I'll notice if the Thumbs make a comeback at some point, but it's been pretty clear that the community isn't going to survive the Thumbs leaving, so I'm going to stop checking the site. Have a good one.

Very happy to see Trek in the original timeline too. Stewart has been aging like fine wine. I hope the rest of what goes into the series holds up.

I just watched The Expanse. There's three seasons of it so far. Oddly enough, I saw the first episode at least a year ago, and it didn't really strike me, but now I was hooked after a couple of episodes. It's different to most sci-fi I've liked over the years such as Firefly, Star Trek and Babylon Five in that it is not episodic in the least. I wouldn't say that it's all-around amazing, but compared to even the most celebrated sci-fi series I think it has less dud episodes or parts of the world I try not to notice, such as Firefly's nerd-fantasy prostitutes. I also really enjoy that the technology appears realistic compared to just about any sci-fi series. There's constant talk of G-forces, ships do breaking burns and manouver just about realistically.

I wish the 2014 film had been stronger. There were some good ideas in it and I love Michael Keaton in it. I'm also a fan of Joel Kinnaman, but I wouldn't say it's his best performance. This visual has a lot of promise, but the film doesn't deliver. I do think the script deals with important cultural developments going on in the 2010's, so at least it tries to say something.

You may want to use that money on another film project. I guess it depends on how much you think the film needs that piece of music instead of something you can get for free. My opinion would be that no one apart from yourself would ever notice.

This was very creative and fun. I didn't have any problems with it and didn't get stuck. Too much Blade Runner I guess.

I think it's great you're doing this. It's very interesting to read these posts of yours.

Have you seen Laurence Olivier's take on it?

I teach English in Finland. I think it's easy to start thinking there's something special about games that helps people learn languages. However, I think that's largely bias that comes from our personal history as gamers. Games have a few qualities that are good for language learning, but it's mostly social interaction that you can thank for the excellent language skills some kids have. So it's not playing, usually, but participating in different communities related to gaming.

Huh. I haven't played a Far Cry game since 3 and had to watch a Youtube video and check. I'm not sure about the rest, but trees had physics and reacted to gunfire in 3 too. I see more bending than cutting off branches. Anyway, what a step down. I should fire up Far Cry 2 again

I remember being disappointed in the first episode, but now that I watched the next two at least a year later I was surprised by how much I liked it. I think it's rather well shot and occasionally imaginative. To me it looks like they spent quite a lot of effort on sets and atmosphere.

I should probably make a thread for this, but there's a legit, free online version of Secret Hitler on secrethitler.io. Would anyone be interested in getting together to play that? It would have to be a weekend for me.

I finished it last night. I thought it was trash, really. Some individual scenes and two to three episodes of the show work, but as a whole it's a complete mess. It's one of the few cases where I felt like I actually lost something by giving it a chance. I also saw Altered Carbon, which has some pretty nice visuals and intriguing concepts, but steadily gets worse as the show goes on. It's never quite as bad, but it's pretty bad towards the end. First episodes are great.

Pretty focused.

After a big Windows update (Fall Creator's Update or something like that) I can't play Youtube videos properly on Chrome anymore. Slow buffering, choppy playback, ramping etc. I have to use Edge (ugh). Of course, when playing Youtube videos on Edge, Youtube shows helpful hints that you should be using Chrome. It's annoying and I can't find anyone else who had this problem and solved it.

I didn't notice anything apart from the space scene obviously. I thought Carrie Fisher stole every scene she was in.