🚀 go-pugleaf

>I'm digging the setting.  Would like to see a little more Alan Wake /
>Twin Peaks in actual storyline than Redneck Rampage though.

    haha not a chance, nary a hint of supernatural mystery in previous 
installments.  BTW Have you been watching the new Twin Peaks?  I felt 
compelled to subscribe to showtime just for the duration of this run, and I 
*love* the first 3 episodes:  All the weird Lynch stuff is there; the old 
actors are still looking good, and are making a great effort; the lore is 
just as exciting to try to follow.  It's wonderful (and apparently has sold 
very few subscriptions so far.  Anything intellectually fun or inventive is 
frowned upon in this era of shit-eating politicians).

rms 

On Fri, 26 May 2017 19:17:07 -0600, "rms"
<rsqui...@MOOyossmanMOO.net> wrote:

>>I'm digging the setting.  Would like to see a little more Alan Wake /
>>Twin Peaks in actual storyline than Redneck Rampage though.
>
>    haha not a chance, nary a hint of supernatural mystery in previous 
>installments.  BTW Have you been watching the new Twin Peaks?  I felt 
>compelled to subscribe to showtime just for the duration of this run, and I 
>*love* the first 3 episodes:  All the weird Lynch stuff is there; the old 
>actors are still looking good, and are making a great effort; the lore is 
>just as exciting to try to follow.  It's wonderful (and apparently has sold 
>very few subscriptions so far.  Anything intellectually fun or inventive is 
>frowned upon in this era of shit-eating politicians).

Coincidence you should bring up the TV show, because I did the exact
same thing you did. 

When I learned of the new TP season, I started watching the original
shows on Netflix (for the first time --aside from occasional bits and
pieces I had never really watched the first two seasons.  Back in
1990, on-demand shows weren't an option, VCR recording was a pain, and
my life was just too hectic to carve out time to sit down and watch tv
at a scheduled time).

When I realized I had an unused free trial of Showtime that I could
invoke and manage straight from the Roku, I decided to sign up.

My first impression of the first few episodes of Season 1 were "this
is brilliant, I see what the fuss was about now".  That's saying a lot
about a show that aired 27 years ago.

I've only watched the first episode of the new season, but initial
impressions are that it is lacking something from the originals. 

Maybe that will change after I watch a few more episodes, but I got
this vibe of "contrived weirdness" in the first new episode, compared
to "organic weirdness" of the retro episodes.  Everything in the
original show felt spontaneous and natural, while the new show feels
to me like it was carefully scripted and mapped out to try to
reproduce the spontaneity of the first.  I hope my impression of the
new show changes.  

What's really interesting about this is that it is an example of an
unbiased A/B test of production from the late 80s - early 90s compared
side-by-side with its modern equivalent.  On this newsgroup, we talk
sometimes about things not being what they used to be, and sometimes
we play old games and think "why don't they make them like this any
more"?  This phenomenon happens with all forms of entertainment
(games, movies, music, etc.), and usually when it does, we wonder if
the original was better simply because we saw it first, or we are
clutching onto our nostalgic memories.   In this case, however, the
nostalgic bias is removed because I never saw the original until now,
and viewed both of them side-by-side in modern times.

Critics seem to think well of the new show overall, while conceding
it's very different than the original and shouldn't be viewed as a
continuation. After having watched some of the original, I would have
preferred more of same.  

Sounds like you're enjoying the new season and that's great, I hope I
get there too after a few more shows.

>Everything in the
>original show felt spontaneous and natural, while the new show feels
>to me like it was carefully scripted and mapped out to try to
>reproduce the spontaneity of the first.

    Oh you can't expect it to match.  Soap operas were huge, the actors 
young and casually gorgeous (the gratuitous lingering shots of 'hot chix' in 
S3 are just that:  gratuitous and self-indulgent), and all the on-the-fly 
plot development and a mystery that was never supposed to be solved are of 
course not there.  This season so far does look like an elaborate puzzle 
game for fans; but a Master's course in TP lore is much preferred to any 
alternative I can think of.

rms 

On Friday, May 26, 2017 at 6:22:37 PM UTC+2, Rin Stowleigh wrote:

> I'm digging the setting.  Would like to see a little more Alan Wake /
> Twin Peaks in actual storyline than Redneck Rampage though.  

Oh, wow! This actually looks very promising (assuming they manage   
to create a somewhat believable back-story)! I heard some rumors   
on Reddit about the Montana-setting a couple of months ago but I 
thought they would go for some sort of an old wild western theme 
or something.

(Then again, any open world FPS game would make me happy).

P

On Mon, 29 May 2017 04:35:54 -0700 (PDT), Pia <pia...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Friday, May 26, 2017 at 6:22:37 PM UTC+2, Rin Stowleigh wrote:
>
>> I'm digging the setting.  Would like to see a little more Alan Wake /
>> Twin Peaks in actual storyline than Redneck Rampage though.  
>
>Oh, wow! This actually looks very promising (assuming they manage   
>to create a somewhat believable back-story)! I heard some rumors   
>on Reddit about the Montana-setting a couple of months ago but I 
>thought they would go for some sort of an old wild western theme 
>or something.
>
I'm not particularly excited about the game; Ubisoft open-world games
- while well-made - are all too similar in gameplay for me to want to
rush out and buy the next one; I can get almost the exact same
experience just replaying one of their older titles. I will probably
pick it up at some point, but not before it drastically drops in
price, and even then it might languish unplayed on my hard-drive. 

I /am/ rather enjoying the drama playing out amongst certain political
groups about how /terrible/ Ubisoft is for portraying "Christians" in
such an uncharitable light (FarCry4's antagonists are a violent
ultra-right wing apocalyptic extremist Christian cult). Strange I
didn't see these same groups complaining about the sterotyped African
militias of FarCry 2, or the weird Polynesian cult of FarCry3, or the
drug-crazed cults of FarCry4. Apparently it's only a problem  for
these people if you make white Americans the targets; everyone else is
fair game.

Sadly these people will soon be laughed into silence and the drama
will end, thus ending the only remarkable thing about this game, but
until then their self-righteous and hypocritical squawks are quite
entertaining. Free, too!

On Monday, May 29, 2017 at 3:04:34 PM UTC+2, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> 
> I'm not particularly excited about the game; Ubisoft open-world games
> - while well-made - are all too similar in gameplay for me to want to
> rush out and buy the next one; I can get almost the exact same
> experience just replaying one of their older titles. I will probably
> pick it up at some point, but not before it drastically drops in
> price, and even then it might languish unplayed on my hard-drive. 

Yes... I can agree with you there. The last two installments did 
feel awfully similar to each other and I suspect FC5 will follow 
the same vein, although I distinctly remember reading an interview 
with one of Ubisofts creative officers (or something) who said FC5 
will have less focus on a linear narrative than before so I guess 
only time will tell.

My favourite game from the series, after Ubisoft took the conn, is 
still FC2, mostly because of its atmosphere and how it felt like a 
true open world game where it allowed you to play it out in almost 
any fashion, but judging from the comments around the net I'm probably 
in a small minority here.

Anyway, I'm so starved for a decent open world FPS SP game that I'll 
accept pretty much anything these days. 

> I /am/ rather enjoying the drama playing out amongst certain political
> groups about how /terrible/ Ubisoft is for portraying "Christians" in
> such an uncharitable light (FarCry4's antagonists are a violent
> ultra-right wing apocalyptic extremist Christian cult). Strange I
> didn't see these same groups complaining about the sterotyped African
> militias of FarCry 2, or the weird Polynesian cult of FarCry3, or the
> drug-crazed cults of FarCry4. Apparently it's only a problem  for
> these people if you make white Americans the targets; everyone else is
> fair game.
> 
> Sadly these people will soon be laughed into silence and the drama
> will end, thus ending the only remarkable thing about this game, but
> until then their self-righteous and hypocritical squawks are quite
> entertaining. Free, too!

:-) 

P

On Mon, 29 May 2017 09:04:13 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallsh...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Mon, 29 May 2017 04:35:54 -0700 (PDT), Pia <pia...@gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>>On Friday, May 26, 2017 at 6:22:37 PM UTC+2, Rin Stowleigh wrote:
>>
>>> I'm digging the setting.  Would like to see a little more Alan Wake /
>>> Twin Peaks in actual storyline than Redneck Rampage though.  
>>
>>Oh, wow! This actually looks very promising (assuming they manage   
>>to create a somewhat believable back-story)! I heard some rumors   
>>on Reddit about the Montana-setting a couple of months ago but I 
>>thought they would go for some sort of an old wild western theme 
>>or something.
>>
>I'm not particularly excited about the game; Ubisoft open-world games
>- while well-made - are all too similar in gameplay for me to want to
>rush out and buy the next one; I can get almost the exact same
>experience just replaying one of their older titles. I will probably
>pick it up at some point, but not before it drastically drops in
>price, and even then it might languish unplayed on my hard-drive. 

I'm actually still waiting for a decent price for Far Cry Primal on
Steam.  I'm patient when it comes to single player only games.  There
are plenty I want to try eventually, but not at full price and in most
cases not even at half full price.  

I haven't seen anything that indicates FC5 has competitive
multiplayer, only co-op.  Shame considering the expectation for
competitive MP set forth by FC2, not only with a fantastic 3d engine
and netcode, with the amazing map editor and community publishing
tools built in from day one.  The subsequent games have all been a let
down by comparison, and I don't suspect this one will be any
different.

The whole religious cult in Montana thing sounds fun to me though,
even in single player.

Man, what a great setting for competitive multiplayer that would be! 

Some of the maps could be something like a Waco TX setting, ATF agents
penetrating the compound, they could upgrade their weapons using tax
dollars provided by Hilary Clinton.  The agents would be
outnumbered by a bunch of bible thumping gun nutters, loonies pouring
out of the walls!  And the agents have to take them all out (except
anyone under the age of 12 not holding an assault rifle) before a
timer runs out and the loonies set the place ablaze.

Ubisoft is really missing out on some never before seen sales if they
don't take advantage of THAT opportunity. 

On Mon, 29 May 2017 08:36:33 -0700 (PDT), Pia <pia...@gmail.com>
wrote:



>My favourite game from the series, after Ubisoft took the conn, is 
>still FC2, mostly because of its atmosphere and how it felt like a 
>true open world game where it allowed you to play it out in almost 
>any fashion, but judging from the comments around the net I'm probably 
>in a small minority here.

I'm not so sure you'd be in the minority here; we're an eclectic bunch
;-)

I too quite enjoyed FarCry 2. It had its fair share of flaws, grossest
of which was the extremely high respawn rate. /That/ one problem
soured all the other elements of an otherwise excellent game; all of
the other issues in FarCry 2 were forgivable but that respawning...
urgh! 

What made it worse was that it had some of the best gunplay in any
FPS, open-world or otherwise. Taken individually, the combat
encounters were all top-notch, with great level design, AI, physics
and gun-mechanics. It supported fighting at multiple ranges and well
emulated the chaos and terror of battle. Later FarCry games (and
indeed, the first in the series as well) offered less verisimilitude,
giving you instead the role of a protagonist with almost comic-book
superhero endurance and abilities (and with a story to match); the
second game felt far more grounded.

Even barring the respawning, the game still had problems; the AI was
often wonky, there was a lack of variety in terrain, the mission
structure was dull, the warring factions were too similar, the story
dragged on, the degrading weapons and vehicles were a bit extreme and
the game-world feels comparatively small and crowded to what we are
offered in more modern games. Still, the core gameplay was so solid as
to make these issues trifling.

 And - especially with user-created mods that removed the
"real-is-brown" filter - the game is startlingly beautiful, even 9
years on.

So yeah, I think FarCry 2 would rank up there as one of my favorites
of the series. It's only contender would be the first game, and less
because its gameplay was in anyway superior and more because of how
revolutionary it felt on release.

On Sat, 27 May 2017 10:47:50 -0600, "rms"
<rsqui...@MOOyossmanMOO.net> wrote:

>>Everything in the
>>original show felt spontaneous and natural, while the new show feels
>>to me like it was carefully scripted and mapped out to try to
>>reproduce the spontaneity of the first.
>
>    Oh you can't expect it to match.  Soap operas were huge, the actors 
>young and casually gorgeous (the gratuitous lingering shots of 'hot chix' in 
>S3 are just that:  gratuitous and self-indulgent), and all the on-the-fly 
>plot development and a mystery that was never supposed to be solved are of 
>course not there.  This season so far does look like an elaborate puzzle 
>game for fans; but a Master's course in TP lore is much preferred to any 
>alternative I can think of.

Been meaning to come back and post an update on this.

Remember when I said I only watched the first episode of the new TP
season on Showtime?

My GF had launched the episode and paused it using the Roku remote
while we were getting ready to watch (for me that means a last minute
work e-mail check before I start watching a long show or movie just to
be sure I'm never more than a couple of hours behind on any
emergencies or urgent mails, then turning off my phone ringer.  For
her it means trying to find something noisy to do during the show
because she knows it drives me nuts -- usually it involves putting cut
up slices of fruit in a plastic bag so she can crinkle it during the
show and annoy me, it's one of her primary purposes in life). 

So anyway by the time we sit down to actually watch, I just hit play
to resume from the Twin Peaks intro song.  What that means is that I
never got a chance to see that we were actually starting on the MOST
RECENT episode, which was episode 4!   It was labeled clearly on the
title screen, but she apparently blasted past that and set us up with
the wrong show.  I can't really fault her though because the Showtime
app on Roku works different than pretty much every other app on the
platform, so I would consider it a usability issue with the app that
it works the way it does.  Still, part four means part four and that
should be an indication that it's not a good place to start watching
from the beginning.

Anyway, so once I realized what's going on we started at the proper
beginning episode.  

And yeah, I'm liking it.  It definitely feels a little more "American
Horror Story" than the original TV series, and is completely lacking
the humor, but it's still very entertaining.

I don't recommend starting on episode 4 to anyone :).   It just makes
you wonder why Agent Cooper is walking around disengaged and clueless.