Amentep

MOONRAKER (1979) - Eon skipped the previously announced FOR YOUR EYES ONLY to leap into the space craze with Moonraker. A plot that is highly similar to the previous outing (bad guy steals stuff so he can complete plan to eradicate all but his chosen people in his secret sea/space base. Bond and an agent from another country investigate. Jaws interferes). They manage to improve on one aspect of the previous film (namely that Drax is a more interesting villain than Stromberg and gets better lines "Make sure some harm befalls him"). But the rest of the story is languid and there's one set piece too many (did we need another boat chase?). Jaws makes a welcome return but as so much reminds one of THE SPY WHO LOVED ME its hard not to notice that this film isn't, ultimately, as good as that one. MINISTRY OF FEAR (1944) - Ray Milland plays a man just released from a prison for the insane who stumbles upon a spy plot by accident. A wrong man thriller based on a Grahame Green story and directed by Fritz Lang. Lots of moody lighting and good suspense. SINBAD: THE 5TH VOYAGE (2014) - while I applaud the idea of going back and doing stop motion animation adventure film (just like Ray Harryhausen did back in the day), I can't help but wonder how writer, director and star Shahin Sean Solimon would look at the Harryhausen films and make such a leaden and grim film. The Harryhausen films (even to CLASH OF THE TITANS) were direct descendants of the swashbuckling films. Derring do, excitement, humour, thrills and fun. This film lacks that, instead Sinbad is more in line with a taciturn Batman than the Sinbad of the Harryhausen films. The stop motion animation is okay, but often staged in uninteresting ways. Almost no character but Sinbad has any development and remains a cypher through the story. A real dissapointment (possibly because the intent to do a modern day Harryhausen film - even with a low budget - is an exciting prospect).

I bet you didn't like MAD MONSTER PARTY either.

I'm not a physicist or an airplane buff, so take my understanding with a grain of salt. Remember that anything in the plane is going at the "speed" of the plane; when it hits enough thrust to counter (temporarily) the gravitational pull objects in the ****pit would have no force that would act on it to cause it to fall until it loses that countering force. Since all of the air in the ****pit is also moving at the "speed" of the plane, the air itself won't exert a force on the candy bar. In other words, it can't reach terminal velocity until the plane alters the forces (by reaching a point in the parabola that they have to alter thrust) in such a way that the force acting on the candy bar no longer is sufficient to negate gravity. The example of the feather and the ball is actually talking about weight not mass (in a frictionless environment, a feather and a metal ball will drop at the same rate). When you look at mass, while the ball may have more mass that the feather, the mass of both the feather and the ball are negligible in relation to the mass of the earth and therefore the slight more pull the ball exerts on the earth doesn't change the elapsed time significantly enough to be measurable against that of the feather. Obviously this isn't the case between a feather and a celestial body. Again not a physicist so someone will surely correct me if I'm wrong.

I dunno, I liked it but I have a soft spot for classic style monsters, I admit. I'll be interested in seeing what he does with Popeye, certainly.

Great Quote: 'Government has no authority "to license one side of a debate to fight freestyle, while requiring the other to follow the Marquis of Queensbury Rules."'

I liked Genndy Tartakovsky's HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA a lot in terms of using 2D animation thought and aesthetics into 3D.

That wouldn't have taken much doing. There, I said it

Digression was fairly common on rec.arts.games.* back in 1996 though - every discussion became a console war or PC vs console war (but then, somewhat to your point, Usenet wasn't moderated typically).

I don't think its just common on these forums, I think its common on the internet. Discussion go off on tangents that have little to do with what started them.

Based on the (very) limited anecdotical evidence at my disposal, this doesn't seem to be an industry standard, though. Yeah its a total anecdotal experience so I acknowledge it might not be applicable to the larger group despite how it influences my perspective. Since I don't frequent strip clubs or know any strippers anymore, its possible it was symptomatic of this particular person, or the time period (about 25 years ago), or the regional area. I've also read of high levels of addiction (drugs/alcohol) with strippers, but again that was years ago and its possible that even those stories were more sensational. I have no issue with the job or the people who perform it.

...It's not really an assumption when the industry standard seems to be "every female character needs to be sexualized". Usually actively pushed by (needless to say, male) producers and execs, even when it makes zero sense. I'd argue that it could be a chicken/egg thing. Do game makers make "sexy female" characters because of execs who think that's what the market wants or because the market actually responds well to it? It might not matter in the end effect, but it matters in what way it might be improved. This would be an easier topic to discuss if it was clear what drove some decisions and whether they were even consciously made or not. I'd lump "doesn't actively hate the job and thinks the money is way good enough" with "enjoys it". I mean, my point was more like "she's not a Victim of the Patriarchy Who Has To Be Rescued From The Awful, Awful Fate of Being a Stripper", but a person who made a choice knowing the benefits and the drawbacks of the job. I wouldn't, necessarily. One of the exotic dancers I knew basically felt trapped in the job by the time I met her. She'd gotten into it for the money and the money allowed her to get independence from her parents. She got a boyfriend, had a kid, the boyfriend left her and she felt she had to keep stripping because she'd established a lifestyle for her kid that she couldn't pay for without the money for stripping and without the child's father contributing anything (essentially he was a deadbeat dad). Thing is she knew that it was a limited lifespan as she was getting older, and she was trying to go to school to get a long term career, but she struggled because the lure of money kept pulling her away from her coursework. Arguably she was addicted to the money (and possibly the attention) she got.

...Fictional strippers entirely brought into existence by men, to increase a game's appeal for men is somewhat different from real life, living, breathing, flesh-and-blood people choosing to do that job because - Heavens forbid! - they enjoy it. You're making a rather large assumption there - not necessarily inaccurate per se, but broad enough for me to feel that a little uncomfortable with it even if at some level I think I agree with the gist of what you're saying. However I think it fair to point out that not all game developers are men, so it is possible for a game to have strippers who weren't brought into existence by men. Also if a game is trying to mirror real life, and real life has strippers and the subject matter contextually makes sense to have strippers, verisimilitude, not male gaze, would indicate the need to include strippers. And while my anecdotal evidence is limited (and naturally because of anecdotal nature not necessarily representative), the women I knew who worked in exotic dancing didn't choose to do it because they enjoyed it, but because of the money they made.

Should he be spitting on anyone?

Ultimately time will weed out all but the best of media from popular culture (books in particular, but I think its true with everything). 50/DaVinci are far too new to have the weight of history to judge them.

I'll admit, I used aimed shots to always shoot the groin in Fallout. Yes it had less advantage to eye shots, typically, but it was...fun.

I could see a case being made that the demo gives extra HP to characters so that the game can be showed off without the party dying. So I wouldn't say that this is necessarily an indicator that the final game is going to have artificial HP inflation. Not that it matters to me, a character getting hit for 7 pts with 26 hit points isn't statistically different from a character getting hit for 70 pts with 260 hps...it'd still take 4 hits like that to kill the character.

And that's a fair complaint in its way. But the problem is I see people complain that Bioware is recylcing their old games and then in the same breath that Bioware has moved away from the things that made their old games good. And just about every level of nitpick imaginable. And when that happens (IMO) the problem the critic has isn't really with the game anymore, they've got a grudge against the company that no game would fix.

I wouldn't say that but both books\movies do resonate with millions of people Twilight is more a teenager attraction but 50 Shades really did well with women of all ages for a number of reasons So no need for literature elitism...just because you have disdain for something it doesn't mean its subpar I think you completely missed his point there though, is the old adage that popularity doesn't always equal quality. You can push a lot of junk if you have good marketing, after all. Actually he didn't miss the point, his point was that just because something is popular doesn't mean it is subpar. Corollarily speaking, just because something is unpopular doesn't make it quality either. (Can't speak to either book, never read either). That said, a lot of the bioware hate reminds me of the old alternative music crowd where once an obscure band signed a contract with a label to make an album they'd sold out and worthy of only derrision. Perhaps I'm wrong, but often times the people who seem to pick apart the current Bioware game often criticise it for doing the same things that BG or BG2 did.

Its not like a person can't physically support multiple causes at one time - and its not like most of the stuff that GG has done to support "ethics in gaming" like emailing sponsers of websites they find have questionable practicises to take all that much time. Heck, a significant portion of the people who are regularly discussing Pillars of Eternity on this very board have probably spent more time discussing it than people did mailing/emailing letters or the like, I'd guess. There are, apparently, a number of people who feel that the national news in the US has pretty much come to that. Between reading company press releases and talking about what is trending on twitter, I don't see much else going on in US news...

Of course not. Poor representation of females and minorities is indeed an issue, a much greater one then "Ethics in Game's Journalism" But that's not Bruce's point. Bruce's point is that, say, "Islamic Extremism" dwarfs "ethics in journalism" in terms of importance. But "Islamic Extremism" would also dwarf "women's represenatation in video games". But that's not what we're comparing. We're comparing sex/gender in video games/video game industry (anti-GGs) and ethics in journalism (pro-GGs) and not the state of women in the world. And both of the formers dwarf in importance against, say, an Ebola pandemic. So because a person theoretically is working to improve games journalism means they can't also be working to improve other things that have nothing to do with games journalism? Are you really making that argument?

^IIRC the rights to Arcanum belong to Activision Blizzard (since Activision bought Vivendi who was the parent company of Sierra)

Thought this looked interesting: Made by some people from TellTale games and Disney who formed a new studio.

And then four more will take their place. Its the HYDRA way. Good return for AoS, I thought. Not a slam dunk, but good.

I'd say the interview Malc linked is relevant here. Perhaps it's elitist of me, but I'd take Jade Raymond's word on how the videogame industry is over that of relative outsiders. Archive for those who don't want to give Polygon clicks: https://archive.today/wBqeF I wasn't familiar with Ms. Raymond (having never played an AC game before). I googled her and one of the first links I found was a demotivational poster implying that she was the "leader" of the team because she was attractive, not because she was talented or skilled at game development. I bring this up because I think it dovetails nicely into Namutree's observation - I've been online since about 1993 (and boy are my wireless routers tired!) and there have been annonymous people spreading hate and death threats (or even just character assasination and aspersions) at that time. The idea that the anonymous person who gets their jolies from posting death threats or doxxing people is specific to gaming is wrong - its something specific to the internet. Now that's not to say its right, but I think anti & pro Gamergaters both have to be careful that people who really have no interest in gaming but a high interest in ****ting on everything they can don't hijack any legitimate point they have (and to be fair, both sides at their core have decent points to make even if they don't always succeed in bringing that signal forth due to all the noise).

Who's the new avatar? Hazel Scott, Jazz singer and pianist and briefly had her own 1950s music show.