footle

Dunno. My thoughts immediately after they got india out were “oh, fuck the weathers changed”.

There being a difference between whether you can buy something, and whether you can play something.

Attacking is only fun if you’ve got people actually trying to defend. That’s three kicked over the bar from an unmarked position near the penalty spot now.

Are these teams meant to be good? Has everyone decided that defending is boring this year?

I’m not entirely sure that a forced switch from 2D to 3D counts, but I’d argue that Zelda (until BOTW, which is significantly different) is something which would play with the theme but was always some kind of Metroidvania/action RPG hybrid: limited puzzles, gear gating, etc. Whereas Mario games can vary wildly between, or even within, levels. gta 3 was significantly different from gta 2; and gta 5 (with its focus on multiple parallel stories and through the roof production values) unrecognisable from the perspective of gta 3?

The problem they have is that they have shareholders, and the first person to say “we’re going to release fewer superhero films” suffers the consequences. Just imagine if you only release two rather than four a year and one bombs and the other is just middling. You’ve cooked your goose. see how Warner are wanting to throw out a load more Harry Potter films, how they keep trying to build a universe out of gloomy DC properties, etc.

It's a speed game. You get enough stuff just rushing through and hitting the timed doors as long as you make sure you hit them: 2 minutes in the second level. 8 minutes in the third level. ~12 minutes at the end of the first boss? 15 minutes level four?

Another way of looking at it - they’ve got a golden egg, two if you count Pixar - that is the vast majority of their film’s division’s revenue. They can’t stop making the movies, because the drop in revenue would be too great. To increase that revenue they’ve had to schedule FOUR of these movies this year. The original cast are all coming to end of long term deals. meanwhile, with Star Wars, they’ve seen that what must have looked like a banker film (Solo) didn’t perform anywhere near expectations. With one commonly cited factor being franchise fatigue. while the gravy train is on the rails they don’t have a problem, but if they’re not worried about what happens when a couple of movies in a row “fail” (eg. only take 150 million domestic) when they’re used to getting 400, 500, 600 million mega hits... there isn’t a replacement waiting in the wings.

The jump in picture quality between Batman Begins (which was a much better film than I remembered) and the IMAX sequence in the a dark knight is stunning. (though halfway through the dark knight I’m remembering why we all stopped thinking batman begins was an ok film, because Heath Ledger doesn’t just steal the show but picks it up, throws it in a safe, then laughs from beyond the grave at the next twenty years of performances in superhero movies).

I’m not sure 21:9 is becoming a standard anytime soon in the home - far too many non cinematic experiences are qualitatively better at 16:9 at home tv widths - particularly sports where getting as much of the pitch in on the vertical is important. enthusiast PCs perhaps, but 21:9 isn’t a new ratio there either, and it’s not taken off significantly in the last five years. The main reason they’d push it is because they can get away with lower overall resolutions than true 4k, which allows those higher frame rates. But that’s a tiny proportion of the overall audience.

Pretty much. You can have weapons you deliberately pick up or don’t pick up if you see them though,

Also the Computer Game was ...

The setting (China, and the Cultural Revolution at the start) is interesting, but other than that I agree.

Though she's only working as a company director, so it's "Sumo Digital acquire Dan".

Just my tuppence ha-penny, but maybe he’d barely even played the things he should have been reviewing, because he was tired of games.