Chindie

Couple of other things have revealed themselves... They've changed the combat system slightly, it seems like the timing is a little off but also you regularly have things miss. I've had a few fights now where, if this was Arkham City, I'd be bouncing around racking up the combo numbers. In this I've frequently had counters simply not happen, punches fly off to no-one in particular, or sometimes worse fly off to the wrong enemy, and it really seems to have broken the ground takedown entirely - 3 or 4 times now I've gone to take down a floored opponent and, despite hammering the right trigger+Y, simply not been able to pull off the move despite being stood over the enemy. I also managed to have a similar issue earlier where I was in predator room and managed to follow an enemy for a while with the prompt for a silent takedown there and the game simply refusing to do it despite my inputs. Camera is also ropey, it's often not terribly well placed for the combat scenarios, and in exploration sequences I've had it break entirely. I was crawling though a vent earlier and had to break a cover, the camera zoomed off somewhere and I was left with a view of a industrial looking vent texture for a while until the animation ended.

Buggy is definitely the word. Just stumbled on a room I cannot exit because it's impossible to grapple up and into the vent you need to use to exit the room. A particularly grim bug as you simply cannot then do anything, you're locked in a small room. Not a restart to fix issue either - happens every time.

I've just played the intro. It feels like an Arkham City expansion pack, very very familiar feeling from the word go - it's the same controls and animations you know from the last game. Looks pretty enough although the framerate has dropped just a little a few times. Graphics are fine, playing on PC. And the voice acting is pretty good, the chap playing Bats is doing a pretty good Conroy impression. Biggest issue so far is...well... I've just started the first part of the game proper and ended up with absolutely no game in-game sound. I still get menu sounds, but whilst playing it's utterly silent. Bizarre. I've seen a lot of comments that the game is buggy, so I'm not too surprised but hopefully that is something that solves on a restart when I spark it up later. Even in that short time you can feel it's not quite upto the standard of the first 2, it's hard to put your finger on but it's lacking that polish. Even daft things like a character we know from the other games in the series looking different is one of those daft things that makes you think this isn't quite upto the same standard the others where. But, fundamentally, it looks like they've not changed much gameplay wise so if you like the others, you'll soon settle into this... it just looks like it might all be set against a slightly crapper background.

On the subject of hitting stationary objects, I fell onto a car the other day.

I think the first Cap is the weakest of the MCU movies so far, but this looks pretty decent. I think the first CA film I great, one of the best. I also really like the first Cap film. It's a proper Saturday afternoon boys own adventure. It's perhaps a little bit too much of an origin story (it takes a while to get going and snacks you over the head with reference to Cap being a noble guy too often) but it's really good fun and nails that WW2 adventure feel. This one logs a lot more action orientated and a lot more like what Cap became in the comics- basically a spy who can handle himself in a fight. It's a bit of a shame that the film isn't going to hold many surprises though. On the plus side, they appear to have made Falcon into a non-shit character, which is a good effort.

I'm sure it's partly that but I've also seen a lot of talk of it being very buggy and not feeling terribly fresh, that not much has changed from the last game. As said, unsurprising.

By most accounts the portable game is a decent Metroidvania game if a little lacking in sparkle. The full scale release is being described as a little bit like a cover of a song you really like - it's got all the requisite parts but just isn't quite the real thing. Which isn't surprising. Will be giving it a crack myself tomorrow.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier first trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLWsK1ZFunA

Going to see Thor on Saturday I am I may have specifically booked next Friday afternoon off to go see it...

Just watched WWZ. Enjoyed it far more than I thought I would. Also seems like we'll be getting a Captain America Winter Soldier teaser this week, with a full trailer to follow attached to Thor: the Dark World. Excellent!

The PC version, with Nvidia graphics cards, has very nice particle effects with things like punches causing turbulence in smoke. It also has this life real-time deformable snow which even simulates different depths of snow. There's also been some fiddling with the cape tech which is always impressive.

Some impressive tech in this. It still strikes me as looking less interesting than the first 2, understandably, and also already leaving a hint that it's not quite to the same standard either, but it's looking decent. Still not sure we needed anther mind.

Like. It's foul. Tastes like someone left it in a tin bath in their garden for a couple of months before bottling it.

Yeah the same Ashcroft that has pledged half his money to good causes Yeah, but... when you get right down to it, right... thats a tax dodge innit? Yeah. Deflection.

I really enjoy the film. It's far from perfect but it works for me. They ditch the structure of the book, choosing instead to hop around the time periods. I got the distinct impression while watching that the jumps were done purposefully, to follow links or strands between each one, but it's not always obvious what these and some of them feel a little strained. Having the actors play different characters across time periods is a blessing, and a curse - in some cases you can read strands into the character progressions (but again not perfectly - you can read Tom Hanks' characters as being a repetition of a spirit on the journey towards... well, goodness I guess, but it doesn't quite work when he effectively cameos in one plot strand), in others you end up sat there watching who's who and also noticing that some of the makeup is absolutely hopeless - more than once a character looks like they've suffered a stroke or been replaced by a mannequin because the prosthetics have left them with near motionless faces and dead dolls eyes - Doona Bae is brilliant in the Neo-Seoul section but in 2 other time periods they do her up as a Caucasian woman and she looks like they'd dropped a plastic alien on set (she also massively struggles with the accent), the same is true of some of the other actors where they have tried to have them play someone of a differing race - Hugo Weaving as a Korean man is particularly horrifying, looking like the bastard offspring of Elrond and Spock had some horrible botched botox and eyebrow lifts done, and even where a race change hasn't happened theres some rough stuff in there - Hugh Grant in the present day time period looks like they've stapled the remnants of someones Sunday roast to his face. But when you're not noticing the problems it is a curiously relaxing and beautiful watch. Across the board it is shot brilliantly, there are striking images in every time period and some very well done effects work. The score is superb. I don't think theres a bad performance in the entire thing, even where there are issues with accents and makeup or the characters are more caricatures (Hugo Weaving's... thing... in the far flung future period) everyone is pulling their weight and doing a good job, which is saying something in a film that has actors playing characters in a comedy, a drama, a sci fi, an action or even a kind of romance all in the same instance (in some cases in the same plot even). It is a little bit of a mess and it's ultimate message (if there is one) isn't the earth shattering event that the film tries to portray it to be, and it heavily toes the line of pretentiousness more than once, but it's one of this years better films imo, and I think many that wrote it off at the cinema might return to it with fresh eyes now in their homes and find they rather enjoy it. EDIT - Should add that it's a film you have to go with. If you watch with cynical eyes you will fight it at every turn and hate it.

3-1 Spurs

I think most people would just call it a drama, but it's pretty much just a character examination. There's not really a plot. It just follows a character for a period of his life. It's an interesting movie but There Will Be Blood is a better film.

Must admit I didn't much like the Master either. It's beautifully shot and has some wonderful acting but it left me completely cold in retrospect.

Just seen Filth at the Electric (seems appropriate as it used to be a porn cinema). It's a brilliantly darkly comic character examination abbot a very very bad copper (/person) indeed. Recommended.

Guillermo confirms they're writing a sequel Addressed in the very post I was quoted from - they may be writing a sequel, it doesn't actually make a sequel much more likely. The linked article itself has it straight from the horses mouth, it doesn't mean they'll be greenlit.

I'll take Chiles over Sue Perkins every day. I can't think of anyone I find more annoying. Honestly I'd take James **** Corden over that word removed. Dislike. I have an irrational love of Sue Perkins.

I must be some kind of hoodoo for Wellbeck. I've genuinely never seen him have a good game. His touch and ball control are diabolical.

I think you're being too harsh - I don't think they deserved to have their daughter abducted at all. Yes, they were negligent, but not on purpose, they were not abusive parents - they did not morally deserve to suffer. Jeez... I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion I'd said they deserved to have their child abducted. I was laughing at the incongruity of the voiceover saying they accepted they'd done wrung immediately followed by a clip of Kate McCann saying that's done nothing wrong. As said by others, it's blindingly obvious they were negligent. They seem to disagree. But either way I funny think they deserved to lose their child in such a manner (if that is what happened) and haven't suggested as such

I confess that, whilst watching the news at lunch and the McCann story came on, I damn near choked laughing when the voice over said 'the McCanns accept they were negligent in leaving their children alone in an unlocked apartment, where Madeline was subsequently abducted, and say they pay the price for the guilt everyday', before they cut to Kate saying 'We've done nothing wrong'. Priceless but of editing. An open letter was sent to the Been questioning how Crimewatch could air a reconstruction as there are 2 clear scenarios that may have played out, and the evidence for one includes numerous inconsistencies, changing of stories and so on that would need to be addressed, lest the BBC possibly garner the wrath of the regulator.