Bartimaeus

Did you go the good guy route or the bad guy? I thought the devs did a great job with the evil options. In some ways, it was actually better crafted than the good guy options, although that's hard to judge since they were all so good. I always play the good guy, of course, but the *truly* evil ending in particular was absolutely stunning and grim. ...I don't know what the bad guy route you're talking about is. Perhaps I should replay...

Wreck-It-Ralph. I liked it more than Maleficent, for sure - but I think I liked it a little less than Tangled, which I liked less than Frozen. Overall, though, I'm pretty impressed by what Disney's been doing lately. I've never much liked 3D animation, and I think I'm beginning to understand why. Pixar, for the last fifteen years or so, has been pretty much the face of 3D animation. Dreamworks has a hit like Shrek here and there, but it's been almost entirely Pixar outside of that. Disney's movies since their last 2D animation (Atlantis - and discounting Princess and the Frog) were Lilo & Stitch, Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, Home on the Range, Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, Bolt...I've literally only seen Lilo & Stitch out of these, and some parts of Treasure Planet. And then...I look at Pixar's main movies/series. And then it hits me...I haven't much liked any 3D animated movies because I don't like Pixar's art styles. I've also always felt like 3D animation had lost some of the charm that 2D animation had for reasons unrelated to the art-style...and again, that's because of Pixar: their story settings. They're almost all modern and/or completely fantastical (Monsters, Cars, Toy Story...). Their over-blobification of humans, their over-usage of inanimate objects like toys and cars...talking fish and rats... I like more classical settings, like Sleeping Beauty's or even Frozen's. I like human characters...but I like for them to actually at least somewhat resemble humans - I still don't think Disney's way of doing it is perfect, but Tangled's and Frozen's have been infinitely better in my eyes than anything Pixar has done in that regard. My favorite Pixar movie is WALL-E...and I guess it's not really a surprise why anymore. Semi-realistic projection of Earth in the future, robots taking the spotlight instead of humans so I don't have to look at Pixar's ugly human faces the entire movie, fairly minimal (for an animated movie) dialogue... Yep, for once, I look forward to the future of 3D animation...so long as Disney continues to ride high, possibly at Pixar's expense.

Packers re-sign Cobb against my expectations. A big thank you to everyone involved,

I can't much stand that one due to the heavy vocoding. Gosh, I hate ripping CDs with EAC. It's so...boring.

Heard it on some compilation album called Chain D.L.K. Compilation CD #1. Not usually a fan of German lyrics, but wumpscut can be an exception.

I've never played the game, so I wouldn't have any idea. I hoped it'd help, but I guess not. Sorry!

I did a quick search for you:

Packers probably losing Randall Cobb and Tramon Williams, and cut AJ Hawk as well. Sigh...

It stays that way even when you are signed in, since Google loves to shove garbage you're not subscribed down your throat rather than the content you're actually subscribed to. I despise YouTube for a reason.

It doesn't have Alyx sucking up to you for every single thing you do, for one thing... That's the thing that really made HL1 better than HL2 to me.

She might've done less than stellar things, but c'mon, I hardly think they were enough to make her sub-human (besides maybe to Volourn, ) - changing one's tune a little can absolutely change others'.

I forget sometimes how good the LotR trilogy soundtracks are...

Maleficent. Mostly non-spoilers: It was, uh, decent, I guess. I'm really not a fan of Angelina Jolie, and was fully expecting her to drag down the movie for me...but it says something about a movie when she's my favorite character and actor in said movie. I felt like Aurora was horribly miscast and perhaps miswritten - she dragged down the movie more than anything else - and that while some of the story revisions were fine (most everything pre-Aurora), things started to fall apart a bit towards the end. I didn't much care for the complete dork of a prince, either - I understand he wasn't supposed to be the hero like he was in the original due to the whole Maleficent factor, but c'mon, it was a little extreme. Still, I didn't hate it, and that counts for something. Story Spoilers: I might try Wreck-it-Ralph next...but truth be told, I really don't care for modern or sci-fi settings in these kinds of movies - with the one exception of WALL-E - so I'm unsure if I'll like it. Still...the Disney train rolls on.

That seems...overly generous. I'll take it if it hasn't been claimed already, but I'm not sure if I can let you pay the shipping costs, too, so PM me so we can figure something out,

Ooh, if it weren't Australia, I would totally take it. ...But it'd probably get lost or destroyed with the cheaper services or something.

Tangled. Pretty good! Thanks to whoever recommended it (TrueNeutral, I think?). Weirdly, I thought it was more consistent in quality than Frozen (there were never really any parts that I really did not care for, unlike Frozen, where there were several), but somehow Frozen still seemed like the superior movie overall. Frozen having stronger music may have played a part in that (with the exception of "Fixer Upper", which I didn't like for several reasons), and a more interesting plot probably didn't hurt, either.

Small suggestion: turn up your mic volume some. I turned up my volume to 100% (it's normally around 30-40%), and it's still a little below my acceptable "normal" volume range. (The video volume is set to 100%, too.) I can hear you and make out words, but it's really hard to follow at this volume. Although...I realize now after saying that, that the game itself is about the same volume level as your voice (a little louder, but not much). What're you using to record?

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but I was pretty serious regarding that comment. The Queen outfit was, I thought, pretty darned cool looking; reminded me a little - not a lot, but just enough - of later Roman (early-mid Byzantine) royalty clothing. I may be a little biased in that regard. I, um...rewatched Frozen again and discovered it was actually Kristoff who knew where she went - because apparently that's where the storm seemed most concentrated or something (even though it always looked relatively calm and peaceful when the castle was actually being shown...eye of the storm-type thing, I suppose?). So I guess that makes sense.

Yeah, that, too. Actually, the thing that probably bothered me the most about the movie was...weirdly, Elsa's voice actress. I didn't see anything of the movie besides dumb commercials, and so shouldn't really have had any expectations of what her voice was gonna sound like...but man, her voice seemed really out of sync with her character sometimes. I thought she sounded fine in "Let it Go", but it was making me physically uncomfortable listening to her in both parts of "For the First Time in Forever". It probably didn't help that her lyrics were pretty crappy both times, but even so. That might've just been me, though. ...that, and her throwing away her totally dope looking queen's dress in exchange for the comparatively silly-looking ice gown. But uh, that's a relatively minor complaint in the grand scheme of things, I guess.

I've been out of the loop for a while. Haven't seen any of those (and probably more). Life happens. I agree with you in regards to it not really deserving the rabid fanbase. Though I liked the film well enough, it really felt like it needed to be longer and more fleshed out. I realize the movie was (probably?) primarily aimed at children, but characters seriously felt like they were undergoing major character revisions every fifteen minutes...without the movie actually showing them undergo those character revisions, or why they were doing so in a plausible manner. Also, this may sound stupid, but it kind of bugged me how...um...I guess...OP Elsa was. We go from her being able to do mostly minor tricks, some moderately powerful passive freezing...to a nuclear winter and constructing castles. A little sense of progression for her powers wouldn't have hurt. And...it kind of bugged me that everyone somehow knew to go to that one mountain. Did I miss something? How did a complete shut-in like Elsa know that having her ice fortress there would be the perfect fit, how did Anna know she was going there, and how did Hans know she was going there...and all of them doing this independently of each other? Overall, still a good watch. Just not...the ridiculous perfection that most everyone seems to have hyped it up to be (and thankfully, not garbage like all the commercials showed).

God help me, I watched Frozen for the first time today. Worse, I moderately liked it. Whoever's in charge of making advertisements really needs to do a better job of it - every commercial I've ever seen of it has made it look pretty unbearable. I'll never forgive Disney for this.

Unless you change where your "presonal" user folder is by actually editing the registry (which is what I have done, so I don't ever need to worry backing it up when I reformat my C:/ drive).