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Sometimes you just like films regardless. I've liked worse films than Wall-E, to be fair. I love Disney's THE BLACK HOLE but even as a kid I knew the end was stupid (that people couldn't walk in a decompressed section of a spaceship without environment suits nor could you actually survive a trip through the Black Hole). But I can forgive the lack of space suits (they had them, but they weren't properly vented, so the actors vision was obscured and it was ditched for safety reasons, something I only found out about years later) and accept that they wanted a 2001 style metaphysical end even if, really, it doesn't work. I think part of my knee jerk reaction for Wall-E and UP! is they got so much universal praise when they came out, I was mind-boggled that no one seemed to be seeing the major flaws I saw in both.

So the blade ain't so proverbial? My suspicion has proved correct. For me that was my first David Lynch film, THE David Lynch film if you will. I had never seen anything like it before, having only been exposed to trashy horror films and big movies at that point. I couldn't quite get it at first, but I knew that I had seen something profound. I highly recommend it, but it is a tough watch.

My problem isn't that it doesn't make sense in the real world, but that it violates the premise of the movie itself (something which even less critical children should be able to pick-up on). Humanity leaves Earth in starships because they've polluted Earth. Wall-E is left behind to take care of the waste, etc. But once we get to the starships, we find that they have the technology to waste resources almost infinitely in an environment many times smaller than that of Earth. Which means they have some form of replication technology (or else it makes even less sense, since these are generational ships). So why did they blast themselves off into space instead of...blasting the trash itself off into space? There's no reason for the piles of trash to exist on Earth if they have replicator technology AND spaceships. Well the reason is that in that case you wouldn't have the environmental themes of the film, but those themes are completely undercut by having humanity never actually learn the lesson of conservation anyhow, since they're still wastrels on the ship - wastrels, in fact, until they crash on earth and then, inexplicably and with no motivation, break free of the shackles of technology and embrace nature (which is, I'm sure, what they want you to take away from the film, but its not an earned takeaway). I have the same basic problem with UP! It also sets up a premise that it violates in the end of the film. UP! establishes in the opening the fragility of humans and the inescapable effects of aging...then spends the rest of the film having Carl bounce around like a Looney Toons character without suffering any real harm. And the thing is, that both films could have used their established concepts and still had their adventure finales had they better crafted the sequences. Wall-E finds the ship, but finds a humanity that, while initially the wastrels that left Earth have learned conservation (and thus earned their regaining the planet) or have Carl still be adventurous but wary of what age has wrought on him and his own frailty. But neither film pays off its set-up, and therefore both violate 'Chekov's gun', IMO. I think instinctively, most people recognize this but then dismiss the problem under "well its just a kid's film", but I think as a kid I would have still been bugged by it (then again, we saw films as the theater as a kid so infrequently, I had a lot of time to think about them, which maybe isn't the case now for kids who saw these films and had tonnes of channels and DVDs to pick from as well as cinema releases)

With me it's the exact opposite. I have an easier time connecting to Fallout 1/2 since they are both turn-based as opposed to real-time with pause.

And for the amusement level...

Smashed burger. Nothing new to report, I just thought the burger was quite photogenic.

i would consider this more as an exception since fury spiritshift is so weird. my working knowledge (based only on what i happen notice, not saying i looked this up in gamefiles or that this is definitive) is that beasts, spirits, primordials can't be resisted by medium shield modal. Wilders, vessels, and kith can be stopped but even then I don't believe something like dargul swipes will be affected. This is why I think one should consider fury spiritshift weird - I think internally it's treated as just replacing the player character with a spirit creature (originally it was an exact duplicate before they buffed it a bit), versus being more mechanically an "alternate" kith form like the other spiritshifts. large shield applies to anything that's ranged (regardless of species). note that sometimes this can be a little ambiguous, since some enemies will use ranged attacks in melee range. Oozes, for example, I can never remember - they both have a clearly defined ranged attack, but when you're up close it also looks like they're using a ranged attack but it might be a different melee attack, I can never remember.

All spells and abilities with a duration can be Refreshed by a newest cast of them. For most of them, that doesnt really matter at first view. It is important mainly because the effects can be suspended. Counfonding Blow deflection malus is preserved when the affliction is refreshed, and in the other side, Beetle Shell when refreshed dont restore the shield part, only the duration. It is the same for Wizard's Double, Ironskin and Dance of Death, and all other spells/abilities like that. The refreshed duration depend of the initial duration, so a Troubadour who chant in first time in regular modal and after that, switch to Brisk Recitation, is going to refresh the chant duration for the initial longer (with the same chant in loop). That was find by Boeroer. * Suppress Affliction (or Liberating Exhortation and Stelgaer's Restraint (Slayer's Claw) for paladin) for hostile effects and Arcane Dampener (or Shattering (Glacierbane)) for beneficials, suspend (of course) the effects for a duration. All Afflictions/Inspirations suspended are refreshed instead of overwriting the Suspended effect ; that mean, when hit by Chillfog and Blinded, casting Supress Affliction prevent for his whole duration to be hit by the pulsating blind effect. These suspending spells/abilities follow the same rule, a newer instance of them when they currently work will refresh them (and so not suspend all new effects since the first cast). * Another exemple is against Fampyr, if they want to dominate a character. The first Dominate effect can be suspended, then every Dominate Attack they perform during Supress Affliction (that can be prolonged) have no effect. By the way there is another strategy against them, to Dominate by self ally with the lesser Will. The character is always under control, and even if the Dominate Attack from the Fampyr do another Dominate effect, the character is still playable (at less during the Friendly Dominate timer). Amaliora is nice for that, the Dominate ability is not enemy only and not combat restricted. That is possible because only the first dominate effect is take into account. Some weird things can happen when an effect have two components (one hostile, one beneficial) : a berserker's Frenzy have the confuse effect as hostile, other inspirations and raw DoT are Beneficial. If the berserker suspend this part (confused) and refresh the Frenzy, then all the effects are going to be listed in Hotile effects. He cant prolonge them with SoT and a new Suppress Affliction (when the other is done) suspend all the Frenzy parts. Certainly that can be used at advantage. That can work also with Hostile effects that have a beneficial component, but with Arcane Dampener/Shattering, to turn they into Beneficial effects (and making them extendable with SoT/WoD). I dont see any example for the moment.. Edit : based on the same model that the Supress Affliction work on frenzy, with Shattering (Glacierbane) it is possible to turn as Beneficial the Confused affliction : when berserker frenzy is activated, suspending Beneficial effects on scoring a crit with Glacierbane on the barbarian suspend all frenzy parts except Confused. At this momnt, refreshing Frenzy adjust the effect for the game itself. When the Shattering effect fade, all parts of berserker's Frenzy are Beneficials, including Confused. Now that can be extended by regular way. This topic is the sequel of the topic about the Unlimited effect for Least Unstable Coil without SoT.

Got several in there. You don't Maul the Saul.

Never seemed worth more than a sale price to me. Probably still is though

You're also missing What Did Jack Do? A short film pastiche of neo noir where David Lycnh interviews a monkey. I haven't seen On the Air, Hotel Room, or The Straight Story. Restorations of Lost Highway and Inland Empire were released this year, so maybe when (hopefully) they get a home media release you can check them out like that if you're interested.

I disliked Lion King when i saw it. Thankfully my niece didn't make me watch it billions of times. I still haven't seen Lost Highway. My Lynch viewing has some gaps in it that I'll correct eventually (or die trying).

Stasis on giveaway at GoG: GOG.com

I just finished a spicy chicken sandwich. Well a hot chicken slider from Dave's, but it's a sandwich and the chicken was spicy so I'm counting it as one. Very good, chicken is juicy (and halal if that matters to you) and the kale slaw helps with the heat.

I made tacos and a huge batch of salsa for dinner last night. My wife doesn't normally like when I do ground meat tacos (I like it because it's fast and easy) but the Krogers here does a pork and beef blend that she's a huge fan of. Right now I'm craving a spicy chicken sandwich

Hey @Gorgon thanks for letting us know! Do you know what was originally there? Like you, I can't see what is there, but I can see other videos posted on the Forums, so I'm wondering what caused that specific content to show an non-interactable cookie message. Thanks!

yeah, b.c. of this i find arcane suppression more powerful than arcane cleanse, because of how it can really mess with AI (both useful for exhausting enemies with limited class resources and a much better way of dealing with infinite casts that are just limited by timer). suppressing an enemy barbarian frenzy will result in them periodically re-activating frenzy to no effect, burning up their resources. same thing with spell reflection on enemies (esp ones that seem to have it as a special ability they can cast repeatedly). similarly, it took me a while to realize that my AI script that activates frenzy or tactical barrage whenever the character doesn't have the right inspiration really needs a cooldown timer, since if they got hit by an arcane suppression the AI script would repeatedly, in short order, use up a bunch of resources repeatedly refreshing a suppressed effect.

I wouldn't call it a wave... but most of my friends and colleagues have caught covid the last 6 months. Since nobody dies from it anymore, nobody makes a fuss about it. I still have great respect for Long Covid though. I can think of a lot of interesting and hilarious ways to die, several of them worthy of jokes, anecdotes and song. Your brain withering away, coughing up your longs doesn't fit the bill. So far, I've stayed clear of Covid through a combination of vaccine and good practices. I would like to keep it that way for a while yet.

Everything you say about WALL-E makes perfect sense and I'd be hard-pressed to argue, and yet it doesn't really feel it makes much difference to me - I get what it was going for even if the way it got there didn't work. The benefit of being more pre-occupied with the characters and it thus not feeling like an overt issue, I guess. Maybe I'm being too kind in giving a film with such an obvious construction issue too high of a rating...but then again, I've always said I try to rate films 75% subjectively and 25% objectively, and it's the only Pixar film I particularly like in the first place (out of the...fourteen I've seen - A Bug's Life would be next but significantly farther down, I guess). Up, ironically, was a film that started out on a high note that then spent its entire run-time steadily descending, so you'll see no disagreement from me there. Finding Nemo is one I haven't seen since I was like ten, so it's not included in the fourteen that I've seen...particularly because I hated it then, which is why I haven't seen it since. I've been forced to re-watch The Lion King at the end of the proverbial blade by my nieces (another that I disliked as a kid and didn't ever want to re-visit), so it's possible I'll eventually find myself similarly endangered there as well, .

Yeah, its the blu-ray. I've been watching weekly since I watched the US Cobra pilot, but haven't had much posting time. Next week I'll watch the last of the intro to the Masked Racer / Racer X. There's been some funny faces for sure.

I love how up to date this sentence is relatively to BPM, as I have corrected the "ascended damages bonus applying to everything" oversight less than one week ago

That's because it's the bestest of the three and they treat it like a dessert, i.e. in limited doses.

They're thematic shortcuts meant to get across an idea quickly (and probably to less critical children) even if it doesn't make much sense in the real world. Humans continue to litter everywhere they go to show that their nature hadn't fundamentally changed even if their environment is carefully managed to be squeaky plastic clean (i.e. they're still the same humans that trashed the Earth even hundreds of years later or whatever the time-frame is); the humans finally stand up at the end as a symbol of hope in trying to make a change, as wanting to make a change, as still being capable of making a change and righting the ship that is Earth if they really try. I would think much more offensive is the fact that clearly so few humans were afforded the opportunity to get off Earth in the first place, so where is all the evidence of incredible social upheaval, mass violence, and the survivors slowly asphyxiating in their own burnt out husk of an atmosphere? Where are all the hills of corpses, and why aren't the bones being slowly compacted into cubes by WALL-E? Well...it's probably for much the same reason: it's a lot easier and less problematic to skip over that kind of level of detail so we can get back to the silly robot love story, . I would say it seems likely that the film just didn't appeal to you enough on other levels to make it so you're not reacting hypercritically to these over-simplified symbolic devices, . If this were a more serious film (or if I didn't otherwise like it myself), I would agree that it's insufficient...but I mean, c'mon, it's crappy Pixar who makes movies about talking toys and fish - that we got any kind of attempt at a real world setting is kind of a miracle in my eyes. I would say that a more serious film should show the humans as being incapable of making any kind of change on a long-term (multi-generational) basis, and playing in with the themes, should also probably have our characters end up in the garbage themselves with all of their effort ultimately being for naught...but um, that would be a pretty different film aimed at a different kind of audience.

I was actually surprised when I typed in : - ) that it popped up with the new ugly winker. But I was on my phone and in a hurry, and scrolling way down through the emojis is a hassle. See, that one typed in fine with : p Whoa, I just noticed this one

I'm back to Chernobylite. I started it nearly a year ago but stopped because it was really unstable and crashed a lot. I figured I'd give it some time to get patched up. Now it's unstable and crashes slightly less often. The game autosaves fairly often, so it's not the end of the world, but it's honestly sad how unstable this game still is. Seemingly, the main villain is the Black Stalker. It's this mysterious boogeyman (well, not so mysterious any more now that I know who it is) that can show up in any area. Once the Black Stalker enters the area you have 2 choices: 1) Run and survive until they leave (the game gives you a timer, so you know how long you need to survive). 2) Fight them off. Early on, I would always pick option 1 when the Black Stalker showed up. Since then, I have figured out the rules. The Black Stalker shows up after an amount of time, this amount decreases each successive day. You know when they are about to arrive because of the chernobylite storms. If you complete your mission quickly enough then you can avoid running into them, though that gets harder (eventually nigh impossible) as the days go by. There is a device you can build in each area that gives you more time, but that's actually counterproductive to my current strategy. I figured out that the Black Stalker can only show up one time a day. Once they leave or are driven off you have all the time in the world to explore, scavenge for resources, choke out NAR soldiers (or kill them if you prefer). As a bonus, the storm clears up once the Black Stalker leaves, making it much easier to see where you are going. Now I want the Black Stalker to show up as soon as possible. As soon as the storm starts I know I have about 2 minutes. I use those 2 minutes to find a good secluded place so that NAR soldiers don't get alerted by gunshots, then I place myself with my back to a wall, break out my fully upgraded AK, and wait for the Black Stalker. Once the portal opens up and they step through I just unload on them. I'll usually take a bit of damage, but I'm well armored now and have tons of medicine.

Japanese corporate culture is pretty crap yes. Good to know about that particular boss, though. I've been lucky, never had bad bosses - well was the one drunk that'd complain about working until 2100 when he came in at 1200... - just really awful management in some places. The former makes every day a sucky experience, the latter just draws out the misery over time

IIRC, using a thief, you could sneak quite far into the throne room and lay a whole lot of traps before triggering Mr Baddie. Then you'd get him to chase you through them (or maybe one used summons to get his first attention, I forget, again). Depending on traps and luck, either the traps would kill him or would at least get his hit points down really low. Trying to charge him with melee chrs. would often ... not work well. Methods like that I wouldn't call cheating, but it is cheese. Edit: re: the arrows - I remember stacking two party members inventory half-full with nothing but stacks of arrows and some sling ammo before long missions/dungeons. I think Khalid was the only melee/shield guy I had. Or was it his wife. One of them could use a bow, one couldn't I think. Man, so many years ago.

I see, and that makes sense. Alan Rickman is great in everything, he's the primary reason I watched the Harry Potter films and actually liked them - for the most part, at least. Not very fond of Order of the Phoenix or the way the finale drags itself out, but I think we've been over that before. We never really rewatched films outside of me wanting to see them and just putting in the tape when I was six*. Which was, by far and large, the original Star Wars trilogy, I must have watched the films over a hundred times. I'm pretty sure my parents are completely sick of the films. Out of the Pixar films I've watched, I liked A Bug's Life, but that came out at a time where I simply had an appreciation for the technical leap in between Toy Story and A Bug's Life, I'm unsure how the film would hold up nowadays and I don't feel like rewatching it just to check. Finding Nemo was okay insofar as Dory is a character that is a perfect match for a friend of mine. When the film came out she used an image of Dory as avatar and started calling herself Dory in real life. WALL-E on the other hand is good fun, has really nice moments between WALL-E and EVE, and now that I think of it, it dawns on me that the interactions between Hibiki and Uta in Bubble are perhaps a little similar to WALL-E and EVE. Huh. Guess rewatching WALL-E is up at some point. Can't deride something that's not there. Kidding. It's not your taste, actually, just your - admittedly enviable - ability to enjoy apparently everything because it's just a movie**. *We had - still have, in a way, just in the basement - this massive film library at home. Hundreds upon hundreds of tapes, then DVDs, then Blu Rays, and at best they got used once directly after buying them, and only when they were films we wanted to watch but didn't go to the cinema for. **Infuriating when it happens in online games. Yes, perhaps this is just a game, but that does not give you the right to waste my time, filthy casual.

Watched the first three episodes of the original 67 Speed Racer. I just barely remember the show, so it's been fascinating to see what memories it tickles Very limited animation - almost Hanna-Barbera level, but I can sew why it struck a chords with the viewers.

maybe you are getting distracted by the typical trappings and elements o' american westerns, which is reasonable 'cause when you look at definitions o' an american western you is gonna see reference to the setting and most people think o' the shootouts and the common themes and the cliché bad guys. tokyo godfathers is a good example o' how perhaps what many persons believe is integral to how american westerns influenced movie-making in general might be missing the mark, yes? while tokyo godfathers is inspired by an american western, it don't have any o' those aspects you think o' when you reflect 'pon what is a western, yes? kubrick were influenced much by john huston's the treasure o' the sierra madre, but is not gonna be a kubrick western found in his catalog... though were a close miss with one film. scorsese is hardly an outlier when he describes the influence o' the searchers on his efforts, and is probable not the stuff you consider when you think o' westerns which were most meaningful to a young martin watching the searchers for the first time. warning: watch only if you never intend o seeing the searchers. now admitted, the searchers were kinda unique in a number o' ways and it don't represent all or even most westerns, but what american westerns brought to film weren't just film techniques and cowboys v. indians; the influence they had were were more far-reaching than you might expect. am willing to bet that most o' the writers and directors o' the films you like best were heavily influenced by american westerns and if not directly, then by their admiration for guys like scorsese and kubrick who were direct influenced by westerns. HA! Good Fun!

Resting bonus if you choose violence in the quest to clear out the Kraken's Eye room. All universal damage bonuses should work including Ascendant's Ascended bonus in unmodded game.

It is worth noting that animals even have a recovery time for swapping weapons. e.g. the brine bats in the first cave will enter recovery if they switch between melee and ranged.

Natural things are weapons (not sure about projectiles from bats, in vanilla game the fury spiritshift weapon is not considered as weapon, but claws and tusks are).

It's a MegaTen game, so it goes without saying that I'll play this. Not sure if I'll jump in day 1 as there's a free DLC coming that adds very hard difficulty and, as a MegaTen grognard, I have to play on the hardest difficulty. Anything less would be shameful and I would risk losing my status.

Can Trail Markers get some options? I'd like to be able to have a range selection with the Trail Markers on the HUD, I don't need to see the ones super far away, can there be a Range clip slider? say from Off(Map Only), 100cm-500cm, or "unlimited" = As it is now? Having "Map Only" options for trail markers would be great alone just to reduce the amount of things on the HUD when they don't have to be there. If I could select on the map which of my trail marker icons I see on the HUD would be great, I want to mark a spot for a resource, but i don't really need to constantly see it either. Maybe I could marker a Trail Marker as "Map Only?" It's rather taxing to turn on the Trail Markers when there's many of them, vs when they're all completely off. It would be great to have a way to reduce the amount of HUD Trail Marker Icons shown on the HUD based on my range to them, and being able to turn displaying the icons on and off from the Map would be great. Thanks for all your amazing work! Such an incredible game!