Shagger

Weird, it was just a few days ago I was talking about N. Night Shyamalan about M. Night Shamalan. More specifically, how he is one of if the worst director ever. Still, I'm not going to miss a chance to dump on that cinematic cancer, so let's watch the trailer and bring out the Shyamalan checklist: Actors staring blankly into the camera? Check Hokey acting? Check The adult acting like a child? Check The child acting like an adult? Check An open ended, innocuous plot set up that tricks idiots into thinking it's inevitable, hard-to-guess twist is smart when it's actually just plain cheap? Check (Well, almost certainly. The father will NOT be "The Butcher", I'm calling it now.) Pointless tracking shots? Check The crazy, superstitious weirdo that for some reason is the one that's actually right? Probably, yes Plastering Shyamalan's name all over like that's a selling point and he was not the man behind Devil, After Earth, The Happening and that god awful The Last Airbender live action movie? Check Yep, this is a Shyamalan movie. It will be shit.

Couldn't agree more. What a director is supposed to is immerse the audience in the story being told in a movie or TV show. Work in service to that story, but Shyamalan has no interest in that. In the process of making a movie or TV show, nothing is accidental. Directors employ actors wearing specific costumes to play specific characters with specific actions, reactions and traits with specific dialogue spoken with a specific delivery in a specific setting with specific lighting while filming with specific shots at a specific range with a specific perspective and a specific focus and with specific editing and filters with specific sound, music and ambiance. Everything, and I do mean everything, is deliberate. They do this direct (Yes, they call them directors for a reason) the attention of the audience to whare it needs to be to create the right emotional investment from said audience. It sounds ridiculous, but when a director does thier job well, you forget that there is a director. You forget are you are even watching a movie or TV show at all. This might not inflate many people ego's, but when you enjoy a movie, it has tricked you, but that's OK. It's a good thing. I've always despised M. Night Shamalan's movies because he does the opposite. With those same tools of casting, costuming, editing, shot options, lighting, set designs, actor direction and script writing he is constantly trying to remind the audience that they are not only watching a movie, but more importantly, watching his movie. That's what's important to him. It doesn't matter if a scene was awkward, slow, didn't convince anyone of the emotional state of a character, was unrealistic or made any kind of logical sense. If he believes it will remind the audience who directed the movie, that will be fine. Why else would he so often write in small roles for himself in his films? Because the fucker can't help himself, that's why! He has to be the centre of attention. He like a pompous, arrogant artist who won't let anyone admire his work unless they ask why he used that one brush stroke somewhere of the canvas. If you need to explain what kind of a reaction a scene is meant to provoke, that mean the scene didn't work. If you asked him him why he had a guy with one muscular arm stare blankly right into the cameras for several minutes and talk about why he only works out that one arm, he's probably spend all night giving a synopsis about it (I'm not kidding, that actually happens in Lady in the Water).

And I'm done eating for the next couple of days.

Before I get started: This review will be spoiler free, but I will open the discussion below to spoilers, you have been warned. @The Blackangel I can't say for sure, but I think is is possible that some of the images in this show, trailer and contained in this review might be triggering for you. I'd have somebody take a look at the media in this post before you read just to be sure. A television series published by Amazon based of the Fallout series on video games released April 11nth viewable on Amazon Prime Video. Me and my better half binged the series yesterday and I decided to share my thoughts. See the trailer below. I've been a fan of the games since Fallout 3 and whilst games vary in strength from a storytelling perspective, it was always going to be a challenge to tell a story in this universe from the more uninvolved perspective one has merely watching said story as apposed to role playing it. A very different challenge as, say, the Last of US TV series on HBO because even though one controlled Joel in the The Last of Us video game, the story was was still told from an observers perspective. Adapting a video game whare the player has full control over what a character what a character says, goes and does right down to the base morals was never going to be easy. Maybe impossible to do in a way that pleases everyone. However, I've got to give Amazon MGM Studios and Kitler films thier props because I they absolutely nailed it! First, the story. Shades of Fallout 3 with the naïve, but courageous Lucy Maclain (Ella Purnell) as she leaves the sanctuary of a nuclear survivor's shelter called Vault 33 to search for he father, the Vault's overseer, kidnapped by a mysterious raider named Moldaver (Sarita Cloudhury). Meanwhile, an defected Enclave Scientist is pursued by a pre-war actor named Cooper Howard turned bounty hunter now known as "The Ghoul" (Walton Goggins) and an opportunistic Brotherhood of Steel Squire named Maximus (Aaron Moten). This is a complex, yet deeply compelling story with a great drive, great energy, great pacing with lots of unexpected twists and turns. As the viewer, you are always kept guessing as the full story behind not just the motivations of our characters, but the origins of the great war itself unravel. The show pulled no punches with the violence and with a surprising amount of superb comedy thrown in for free along with all the drama. I absolutely loved it. The aesthetics are absolutely nailed. The looks exactly as fans of the show would hope with authentic looking costumes and sets. The pre-war and Vault settings in particular I liked, especially the pre-war cars, many of which actually appeared to be fully functional, a nice touch. What creative liberties were taken, they were smart about. Nothing felt out of place. The effects, both practical and CGI were also really good. However, one thing I wasn't so sure about was Walton Goggins make up as "The Ghoul". Compared to the other ghouls in the series and, indeed, the games, he skin looked a little to "complete" in the sense that it didn't really look like it was hanging off like it should with a very monotone look to the colour. He looked less like a ghoul and more like a burn victim with a spray-on tan. Here's a side-by-side of Walton Goggins as "The Ghoul" and a Ghoul from Fallout and I just think that the Ghoul from Fallout 3 looks better with a varied colour pallet and more varied textures going on. The characters themselves are well fleshed and very well performed buy all the cast, no complaints here. Wether you agree with thier motivations and goals or not, you are always given a chance to relate to them and understand them. The show never gets bogged down with exposition, we learn about these characters through the story is vey easy to digest yet exiting way. This doesn't mean I like all the characters though, more specifically Maximus. The guy was traitorous, selfish, stupid and incompetent. That would have bene fine if it weren't for two serious issues: I didn't feel like this character really learned or grew much at all through the story. He was pretty much the same self-centred glory hound at the end that was at the start. The show tried a little too hard to make one empathise with him, even when he was at his worst, and that was annoying. Still, Maximus aside, these characters really grew on me. I loved Lucy for her sincere compassion as well as her courage and admire the way she refused to let the world about re-shape her principles. The Ghoul/Cooper left me wanting more of the heart that has clearly been buried and hardened by decades of life in this world and the tragedies' in his life. And without that, he would still be ruthlessly fucking cool. And I must say, I want The Ghoul's Gun modded into Fallout 4 immediately. The only other thing I didn't like was Amazon and thier stupid video player. Not only did it glitch out frequently blackening the screen in whole or in part several times while watched, we still had to put up with ads even though we pay for Amazon Prime. Sorry, but that's not good enough. I'd actully feel inclined to download this show if I wanted to rewatch it to avoid this nonsense. But that's nothing against the show itself. It was entertaining, compelling, respected the source material and was well produced. I am even temped to say this was better than HBO's The Last of Us as an adaptation, and that is saying something. A much watch for both fans and newcomers alike. 9/10

There's nothing righteous about keeping up a religious schedule. It's, well, just that, keeping up schedule. It's a routine. Just because somebody surrenders a hour or so of one day a week to listen to some deluded zealot read from a story book doesn't make them better than other people. It means they can set an alarm and get up before 9am on a Sunday and that's about it. I've said if before in this topic and I'll say it again, religion is for people who want to relinquish responsibility for how they behave, what they say and even how they think and feel to something else. It's for the weak minded who can't be bothered to establish a moral compass of thier own. I'm not saying the practicing religion makes on evil. On the contrary, most religious scripture promotes a positive way to live and treat other people, all I'm saying is that it doesn't automatically make people good either. Having said that, religion is not innocuous. It's archaic and open to twisted interpretations that people use to justify heinous acts, attitudes and behaviour that anyone with a moral compass that they themselves developed through reason, logic, experience even thier own mistakes would find completely deplorable. But like I said, religion is for people who want to relinquish responsibility for how they behave, what they say and even how they think and feel to something else, even if that includes rape and murder.

Yeah, it's looking more and more like the controller. Best of luck with the inspection and be sure to let me know.

It should still be possible to download PS3 firmware onto a USB drive using a PC then install it onto the console.

I think this is some sort of issue with the game. I've come across stories of similar control issues on both PS3 and PS4. If you haven't done so, try reinstalling the game and, if possible (I don't know if the PS3 is still supported like this) make sure the game and system software is up[ to date.

Could you please tell me what platform you playing this on and what controller this is? I just want to do a little troubleshooting as I've had a lot of experience with 3rd party controllers and know that there can be solutions to these issues that don't involve having to buy a new controller. On the contrary, I find that that doesn't really work on most occasions.

I tend to place blame for bad performances on directors and those in charge of casting before the actors themselves. Obviously whitewashing, casting cisgender actors in trans roles and casting actors for roles whare the characters have certain disabilities when the actors don't (Looking at you Music (2021) ) can cause huge problems, but even that isn't the fault of the actor. Ultimately, it all comes back to the director. It's thier responsibility to cast the right actors for the right roles. If the director isn't up to snuff, replacing the actor will do little to help. Take M. Night Shyamalan, he can take a great actor like Mark Wahlberg and make him look like a complete plank.

I bought FFX multiple times because, for reason, the disk for that particular PS2 game kept going wrong. Other PS2 disks got damaged from time to time and needed replacing, but nothing like as often as FFX did. I also bought the remaster for both PC and console, so count those and I must have bought the game on 5 or 6 separate occasions. Then there some of the usual suspects that launched again and again on new hardware with new updates like Skyrim, but I think my buy count for that sits at 4, which isn't bad.

+1 on that. I thought Code Veronica X was really underrated. True, there wasn't much of a leap in terms of gameplay improvements from the PS1 that probably should have been there. Capcom did try to evolve Resident Evil but then just decided to turn those projects into thier own games not once, but twice (Onimusha: Warlords and Devil May Cry, both of which came just one year after Cove Veronica X). It seems to me Capcom wanted to move Resident Evil forward but didn't really know how they wanted to do it. So I suppose it's little surprise that they ended up making what was basically RE2 again with updated graphics, but that ruined this game's reputation. The world was seeing what this new generation of console (The PS2 especially) as well as what Capcom themselves were capable of at the time, so I can understand why some people felt let down by Code Veronica X. However, give this game the remake treatment that the other RE games have been given and I'm all for it. According to my research, Sony Computer Entertainment still owns the IP. They're obviously just sitting on it, which is disappointing. Again according to my research, the game actually sold quite well, close to 1M copies, which isn't bad for a PS1 JRPG released near the same time of FFVII, but the sequel sold like veal chops at a vegan market and the IP hasn't been touched since. The game has pretty much fallen out of memory and I don't think a remake would sell enough to justify the cost of making it. There just isn't enough interest. Sorry, but the question of today's version of Konami messing up the MGS3 remake does not start with a " Will they", it starts with a "How badly will they".

Personally, I'm a long way from convinced this would work. A player approaches an open world with ambition and a keenness to explore, not with the kind of apprehension and dread that one would associate with horror. Horror is told very much through the environment and that environment is meant to make you feel trapped and desperate. An open world is all about empowerment and opportunity. It's meant to make the player feel important and powerful, not what one want's to feel in horror game. To me, this more likely to work if Capcom focused less on the horror in this open world Resident Evil game and for the game to be like the more action orientated games in the series, like 4. The obvious problem with that is that at least a significant portion of the fanbase would be put off by that after seen some great horror games and remasters from the series in recent years. A Resident Evil open world has another more indigenous problem. Unlike other companies like Ubisoft or Bethesda, Capcom isn't exactly known for it's open worlds. When they have given it a go, it's been to mixed success. Sorry, but I do see Capcom making a mess of it, especially if they do try to squeeze the square block that is survival-horror into the round hole of an open world.

Any can answer this question with a long-drawn explanation, most will be able to answer this question with a sentence. Many will be able to answer this with a single sentence, or even single word. Me, I answer this with a single letter; A A were the band that introduced to the truth that there was something better than than the nonsense the we call "pop". From Rammstein to OOMPH!, Sabaton to Nitghwish, Iron Maiden to Judas Priest, Metallica to Testament, X Japan to Lovebites, In Flames to Scar Symmerty, Linkin Park to Falling in Reverse, it all started with this, sadly mostly forgotten, post-punk band from London. Thier album Hi-Fi Serious changed my life.

Before I get started with my own post on this, @Reality vs Adventure, you have got to stop trying to bring politics into topics like this. Is it not fair on this family to imply this about them just for filing this lawsuit no matter how stupid you feel it is. Even if it turns out this family are literal Nazis it wouldn't matter because social-political bias has nothing to with this situation, so why make that connection? This family could to be liberals and this would make as much sense. More importantly, you know perfectly well whare to go on this forum if you want to discuss politics. Create a thread there to share your thoughts how these idoligies are affecting modern society (That actually would be an interesting topic) referencing these situations if you want, but stop bringing these arguments into threads whare this is clearly not relevant. Anyway, before coming to this thread I saw another article this morning from PC Gamer that goes into the details and definitions of these "dark patterns" a lot more closely that the article @killamch89 posted. To be fair, that article was more focused in this specic lawsuit. So there's nothing wrong with that article, it just had a different focus. Back to the point, and having read both articles, I don't think this lawsuit is so ridiculous. Most of us are aware of how damaging lootboxes are due to the phycological tics they employ to keep people spending, but that's not the only form of phycological manipulation game companies employ. Again, please read the PC Gamer article for a better description of the examples then I could offer. Game companies use this manipulation to achieve what they would call "player retention", but I think we can see that as "to get them addicted" in other words. This manipulation may not work on you reading this, likely an adult devoid of mental disabilities, but these tactics are not meant for you. They are ment for people who, for one reason or another, are more vulnerable, like the autistic child at the centre of this lawsuit. Children as well as adults with mental disabilies are protected by law from gambling for a reason, the same reason why games doing shit like this should also bear this criticism, especially if they are rated for children to play. Yes, the parents have a role to play to protect thier children from these things, but they can't be expected to be able to do so if organizations like the FTC and ESRB aren't doing enough to warm them of the dangers these business practices pose. Parents are having to deal with this almost completely blind, only learning the dangers of the manipulative design of these games when it's already too late. So to this family and thier lawyers, I say go get 'em! Bleed these companies not just for yourselves, but for every other victim and for all of us who are sick to death of these business practices.

Actually, at least as far as I can tell, EA have nothing to do with The Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection. As much as we would all like to, we can't blame EA for this.

I would question the logic of GTA IV being ported to the Switch not because of the game's age, but because GTA IV sucked noodles and who would want it anyway?

@Smokey has perfectly shown the issues with the name. It's like somebody just randomly picked out two overused gaming buzzwords to smash together. Why noy not "Shadow War" or "Origins Crusade". I've got a similar complaint about the way the game looks. The graphics look great and it is actually very pretty, but design wise it looks like somebody was trying to check of a list of popular tropes. We got dragon things, zombie things, demon things, wolf things, spider things, shields and swords, bows and arrows, men's armour covering everything, woman's armour covering almost nothing, campfires, horses, castles, it has the lot! I'm reminded of just about everything from Warframe to Skyrim, Bloodborne, Black Desert, The Last of Us, Dragon's Dogma, this list goes on. Whilst those are good games, that is not a good thing for Chrono Odyssey. This feels like a game developed by committee more than creativity. So it's clichéd in its name, it's clichéd in it's presentation, so I have no reason to believe it will be anything other than clichéd in every other way as well. And if this is FTP, then forget about it, it will be a greedy, soulless grind on top of all that.

Honestly, I'm not pumped if this is a new generation of Xbox. There just hasn't been anything within the tech space boasting an innovation worth getting existed about in recent years. The fast SSD's and power boost for the PS5 and Xbox Series X were well implemented and used to great affect, but did little to change the gameplay experience. Xbox have been especially guilty of doing nothing other than basic hardware upgrades over the last two generations of console, so a new a new Xbox home console does not boil my pasta. An Xbox handheld, now that is a little more interesting, but that aforementioned lack of innovation from Xbox leaves me worried that it's just going to be a copy of the Steam Deck and other recent PC handhelds.

Another day, another disastrous game launch. This time it's Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection from Aspyr, the same company behind the recent, and to fair quite well received, Tomb Raider Remasters, but that just makes this catastrophe all the more sad. (BTW Steam, in what way is this game like Fallout 4?) First, at launch there were only 3 servers for the multiplayer available leaving room for only around 200 players total, so we're already into some deeply stupid territory here. Then there issues with crashes (Like when one tries to search for a game mode, for example), graphical glitches, lagging, rubber banding and so on. The game is barely playable online, which is the main draw for this franchise. But wait, there's more. The new file format makes the game incompatible with most currently available mods for the original games, so we can't expect the community to come to the rescue anytime soon. And also, can somebody explain to me why the game is 50GB in size? I know that it's two full games with a graphical update, but they're still 20 years old! There is no reason for this other than Aspyr being unwilling to compress the game's though sheer laziness. There is a rumour that Aspyr did this to improve compatibility on the Steam Deck, but I don't buy that because, as you can see, it's not like one needs a particularly powerful PC to run this. I got annoyed to find the PC port of Final Fantasy XIII being 50GB+ as a 13 year old game, but at least I understand why that port is so large. The cut scenes in that game are largely made of digitally animated video clips that take up a lot of space and are all in there twice to be compatible with both the English and Japanese voice overs. So there is an explanation for that. I don't feel that Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection has such an excuse. Companies can't even take games that worked fine 20 years ago and make then work now, what a joke.

Have you done any of the optional content like the celestial weapons, collected for the monster arena obtained Anima or the Magus Sisters aeons, fought the dark aeons or the omega weapon?

A game based of Felix the Cat? That very early cartoon from the 1920's? Releasing a game based of Felix the Cat makes even less sence now than it did in the 80's. At least there was a movie that came out around that time. It was crap, but at least it existed. Seriously, who asked for this? The permice of Felix the Cat is that Felix has a magic bag he can morph into anything he wants. That's a cool concept for a video game, it really is. If one wanted to make a video game based off that, why not make something new? Use the modern tools and modern know-how how to help this concept reach it's full potential? Think about that, think about how the game hasn't seen any noticeable enhancements and think about that ridiculous price and you will probably come to the same conclusion I did. This is a lazy cash grab. Some lazy ass hat has somehow acquired this IP and seeks to make a quick and easy quid out of it. It does look like decent game for it's time, but it obviously hasn't been remebered otherwise more people would know about it. If it had no impact then, there is no reason to expect it to have an impact now. This just isn't worth even the low effort that has been out into it.

I couldn't agree with you less. First off, whilst the smartphone is something fairly new, gaming on portable devices is not. Literally every positive you just listed has been perfectly possible since the 80's with the Game Boy and other simmilar devices. The technoligy has advanced, of course, but that's something to expect, not praise. Not to mention that advancement of technoligy has happend throughout the gaming space, not just in portable devices, so it's not unique at all. Second, even if one is impressed by the technoligy (And despite what I just said, I actually am), that isn't what matters. What matters is how the gameplay experiance has been enhanced, and that is whare we run into the huge issues with mobile gaming. That being the actual games. The Apple App and Google play stores are are oceans of shovelware riddled with the most greedy, anti-comsumer business practices the gaming space has ever seen. The technoligy may have grown leaps and bounds, but the games themselves are a joke. It frustrates me to see so many people on forums and social media make posts like this just expecting the world to join in with them in licking mobile gamings starfish as if that's the only thing that makes sense do. As if if there is literally nothing begative and we should all worship mobile gaming. Well, not me, not ever. Mobile gaming is crap and it will continue to be crap because of people like yourself @Kennysplash who, with all due respect, don't know any better. It's not your fault, you likely just aren't old enough to remember what gaming was like before the digital STD we call mobile gaming infected it. Well, I am, and when I say thing used to be better, that's not nostalgia, it's just a fact.

Why would you make such an effort to maintain the cleanliness of something you think looks so bad in first place?