Chindie

I've no idea what to make of Arrow. I like the idea, taking one of the less marketable comic properties and making a decent TV show of it, and I like some aspects of what they've done with it, but I'm not fan of the Green Arrow, every episode feels like something is missing somehow and the acting is **** awful across the board. The girl playing Green Arrow's sister is **** hot though, which make sup for a great many issues.

Pretty much. I quite like the Assassination of Jesse James... and that can hardly be called a rip roaring action movie but it looks incredible and has superb atmosphere and great performances. But Killing Them Softly... blimey. It manages something that should be impossible. It's only just over 90mins long, but feels both longer than that, and shorter. Longer, because like the directors previous film, it takes it's time over everything, long dialogue sequences being the prerequisite, which slows the film to a crawl. But also shorter, because nothing happens. The entire film feels like the first act in a gangster epic, it feels like set up from start to end for a bigger story. It proves deeply unsatisfying. It's a film with something to say, no problem with that, but this has the filmic equivalent of someone with a megaphone screaming their argument at you. 80% of scenes have some reference to the economy, but they're too obvious - this a film where everyone's radio is tuned into economic/political discussion or rhetoric, every TV has political debate or commentary on it, there are a few on the nose bits of dialogue making reference to the economical situation in 2008, and there are a few conspicuous shots of things related to politics and economics (to the extent the film opens with shots of McCain and Obama campaign posters). In fact the problem with all of these references are they are too conspicuous. It smacks you around the head with it. And it is boring. It's so boring. Worthy, but bloody dull.

I liked AC2 more than Brotherhood, myself, despite the latter adding nice extras to the decent AC2 foundations. I just didn't like Rome as much as I liked AC2's bits of Italy, and the story wasn't quite as interesting. Revelations constantly felt like a game shaped buffer for the development team of AC3, made to sate Ubisofts taste for an annualised series. It takes Brotherhood and adds things to the bow that don't feel necessary. The hook blade ziplines never felt useful, the bombs were never needed beyond the missions they forced you to use them in and they didn't make for particularly fun tools to use for the sake of it, Istanbul didn't inspire me either and the story didn't really do much either (it's one of the most poorly titled games I can recall - they're aren't any revelations?!). On Scumbag Lee, I want to play the Walking Dead after how much praise it's had everywhere, but on hearing its getting a retail release in the US at least I'm holding off.

Ordered a suit online (thanks to the stores round here not having one/any I liked). Arrived today and unbeknownst to me thanks to the website, it's a slim fit... it fits, fine, the sizes aren't wrong, but I'm a bit uneasy with the fact a slim fit suit jacket tends to be really bloody short. Thats the way it's meant to be but it feels really weird to me. But it looks alright so I don't wanna take it back.

John Lewis adverts. You're a **** shop, don't pretend you're anything more.

If you like AC2, Brotherhood is definitely worth a play, it's basically AC2.5 and a really enjoyable play (apart from the last hour or so - they make a fairly silly gameplay shift that is pretty unsatsfying). Revelations is skippable - it's additions are pointless and it feels like a buffer entry in the series. As for AC3... if you really, really love the series, you won't care about my issues with it. I like the series but also found the niggles prevented my absolutely loving it. AC3, as far as I can tell this far, is perfectly playable, but is riddled with little flaws and in some cases makes silly mistakes and errors. Even the Brotherhood stuff, which I simply can't get my head round to the point it might be broke in my game at least, is unnecessary, you'll be able to finish it without touching the system (I only want to look into it as I'm a bit of a completionist). If you just like the series, I think you could do well to leave it for now and wait for a price drop whilst playing the other great games this year has given us.

He's saying that Benteke has been a good signing. What he's said there amounts to saying 'Benteke has been REALLY good, el Ahmadi has been REALLY bad', the extremes equal in opposite directions.

Had money on over 6.5 so i shan't complain about another Klitschko yawnathon.

I've spoken a lot about the issues I've had with it over the last couple of pages but more and more things strike me about it. Some of it is just daft - Messing around earlier I decided to fiddle with the look of Connor and went and bought a new outfit. I actually bought a couple. But when you buy an outfit, you just get a description and a graphic of a wooden crate - you can't look at the outfit before you buy. And then I seem to be unable to change back - in previous AC games you'd have what amounted to a wardrobe at your base, and this has that too... but my new looks are not there to change back into. Or if you dyed an outfit, you could just go and dye another colour. You can't do anything like that either. And then if you do change your look it's incredibly inconsistant as to when it does and doesn't show your new look in cutscenes, in some it does, in others it doesn't. The crafting system has some moronic design choices - you can produce items for trading, there are loads of items and there are loads of basic materials you can use to produce them, and given the time period a lot of it is wooden items. The game decides to offer many varieties of wood you can purchase from the woodsman in your homestead in the crafting menu - walnut, pine, oak etc - and different items use different woods. But the items don't specifically tell which wood they use, they simply have a picture of wood. And guess what? All the different woods have minutely different tiny pictures of piles of wood, which needlessly adds difficulty to the system. The game also doesn't explain that your craftsmen level up, which leads to more confusion, and even when you do cotton on to the fact they level up you won't be immediately clear as to how they level up (for reference, if you do their associated Homestead missions, each craftsman will eventually have something said about them like 'Dave can now make higher quality items!'). You can also produce items that upgrade Connor - a twin holster that allows you to carry 2 pistols, a larger quiver - which you can only produce once... but the game then leaves them there in the menu for you to have to scroll past every time. The game suffers for a lack of character, to be honest. Connor is a dull, crazily naive blank canvas, not a touch on Ezio, and to be frank there isn't a character in it that isn't mindnumbingly uninteresting. The world isn't helped for that either - none of the cities are interesting. They are flat, monotonous... You rarely take to the rooftops as it is difficult to really cover major distances there, and given the ubiquitous nature of riflemen on rooftops, you will find yourself sticking to the streets pretty constantly, which feels strange for this series. When you are on the rooftops you're climbing the highest structures in seconds. The Frontier is empty, and massively trying to cross when playing sequences in winter as Connor struggles in deeper snow. That might be an accurate take on reality but it also makes it a chore when you need to cross the entire map to reach a sequence slowly trudging along... Even when you have a (rare) fast travel location nearby you'll wish you could just skip to your objective as there is nothing to do on the way there, besides track collectables and (largely pointlessly) shoot wildlife. Jumping through the treetops is an attempt to add verticality to the game but lacks the freedom of the rooftop gameplay Ezio and Altair had, as you are effectively forced to run through set pathways (that you'll soon see corners cut on - they repeat sequences of trees across the maps. Particularly noticeable with the Frontiers Viewpoints - a couple are buildings but most of them in the wilderness are the same tree repeated 5 or 6 times). It's also buggy. At the moment I get a little notification every time I enter a new region saying I've received a new weapon - I haven't. I also regularly get notifications telling me I'm in the top X for Activity Y - believe me when I say I'm not. I've had it get stuck in a loading loop this morning and I've had a couple of hard lock ups. I've also had a few weird graphical hitches. I've had a mission fail to load in the objective - the game required me to track down a target in a set area, par for the course for the series, but on 3 (of the required 4 targets) it did not load in the target, leaving me wandering round the (small) area looking for the target, flicking Eagle Vision on constantly, for quite some time. I took leaving the area and re-entering each time to get the target to appear. It's not like I was just doing badly and couldn't find a moving target - they were static targets. I was also killed in the cutscene following completing a mission, which would have been bloody annoying had it not been so funny (thankfully the game checkpointed the beginning of the cutscene and I lost not progress). I'm fairly convinced the Brotherhood recruitment is actually broken. Liberation Contracts supposedly allow you to recruit new guys, but on visiting any of the locations for a Liberation Contract in Boston (a town I've largely otherwise cleared now), there isn't a mission to do there. So I'm left with an un-completable couple of missions in Boston it seems. If I'm doin something wrong, that game has not explained so. And of course you'll fail objectives because of the gameplay mechanics, even with the new safe free running they've put in, and as usual it's the chases that show it up most. After 5 years and 5 games, I've kinda had enough of that. The strange thing is, I'd probably not be so disappointed by all this had the game any charm, like it's predecessors. But it doesn't. I can see a lot of people think I'm being harsh but, as someone who likes the series, I'm really struggling with this. It's hard to care about it all. In actuality the only aspect of the title that is anywhere near flawless is the naval combat, and you could easily complete the game barely touching that on current showing.

That's what they want you to think.

They'll get at least 3. I can't see that to be fair. Isn't good enough.

I'm increasingly of the belief that Assassin's Creed 3 was shoved out the door somewhat unfinished. Disappointment of the year contender.

Just seen Killing Them Softly. Hmm...

I'd pay good money to see Cameron and Schofield have a scrap. It'd be hilarious.

They have, it's one of the things mentioned in the article. They actually make a suggestion towards the driving mechanic making for a capable serious racer IIRC, which is very interesting... GTA4's driving took a while to get used to and bikes on it were a bit of a pain in the arse, so a shift in what is predominately a driving game for much of it's length is to be excited about.

I'm glad thats not an accusation against me, as I don't even know how many 'Likes' I've had and I don't really care to either. The system for me is just a way of saying 'this' without having to type and waste space. I don't see how Cameron is making that assumption - if anything he's fighting against the assumption, quite clearly. He has had to acknowledge the assumption to warn against and combat it. A man of influence (and I do think a lot of people respect Cameron) making that clear warning is better than simply avoiding it as a taboo.

I don't think the lock on needs to go wholesale, it works very well in RDR, and Max Payne had a variety of decent takes on lock-on shooting. It needs tinkering a little. I think something between RDR and MP3 could be a really good feeling gunplay mechanic that is flexible enough to provide an ease of use and a degree of skillful play.

Exactly. A movie lives and dies on it's own merits, adaptation or not. Does Jackson's take on the LOTR represent a perfect, blow for blow interpretation of the books? No... but it wasn't intended to be. Does it work on it's own merits? Absolutely, even if in places it missteps or has it flaws, and it plays the story of LOTR well for a wide audience to enjoy and take something from.

I would argue that there is an underlying 'Gay politician = paedo' theme growing in the rumours related to this scandal, and I'm sure Cameron was aware of it too. he will be aware of the rumours and, having been dropped in this situation by Schofield, tried to nip the wrongheaded and distasteful association in the bud. He was right to do so, as would anyone else who chose to shed light on such a belief. I don't see how he can do so without mentioning the idiotic link, making it a taboo subject to bring up certainly doesn't help. You're really reaching for this Drat and I don't think many are buying.

It's also worth saying that a few of the rumoured names relating to politicians and paedophilia are either openly gay or long suspected of it, and I would posit that a few of the rumours are based on little more than a politician being gay - Cameron is simply warning against both an hysteria of suspicion of homosexual political figures, and also against this idea that gay men are somehow more likely to be paedophiles, which has been around for donkey years and never seems to have particularly gone away, always rearing it's head when any 'paedo scandal' crops up.

Do they have a big rivalry with 'Smäll/Calmed'?

RDR is probably my favourite game of this generation. Loved every moment, dripping in atmosphere and surprisingly fun to play, on paper it doesn't sound like it should be so good but they absolutely nail it. As for GTA and the multiple protagonist thing, it could be a great move but they will need to weave these protagonists very carefully into the narrative, it seems they are intent on doing a 3-into-1 narrative which could be glorious, or could feel a little messy and unwieldy. The series needed a proper shift somewhere however, and Rockstar are on the ball with their bigger gameplay choices usually (traditionally the more basic fundamental stuff is where they've made errors - gunplay for example has usually been a bit crap in GTA titles, they've apparently made an effort to fix that this time), so it should be glorious. Opens the door for strategic choices too.

Indeed. I don't like Cameron much either (he often comes across as an arrogant aggressive clearing in the woods, and I don't like a lot of his politics obviously), but I'm with him on this.

Phillip Schofield dropped a bombshell on Cameron this morning and handed him a list of alleged Tory paedos. It appears the list was full of gay members (which is a theme of the rumoured names out there), but Phil also dropped a bit of a clanger, the side of the card with the names on was visible to camera for a moment... Cameron chose to answer with a warning towards homophobia for what its worth.

Girls following the path to the clearing in the wood is the plot for most of Rob's video collection I think...