Chindie

You didn't have to do it, apart from a few cases where the game forced you to do it for a mission, but it would pester you constantly to do so, and there were benefits for doing it as well. It was a pretty universally derided addition (I've never met someone who liked it), so they would probably do well ditching it. But saying that Rockstar are full of themselves and aren't much cop at reining in their showing off so I would not be surprised to see it in some manner, still in there.

IIRC 'Wrong Side of the Tracks' was one of those missions you basically had to get a little lucky at, I remember it being a pig when I was working through San Andreas. As for GTA5, theres a few new screens floating around that have come from a preorder bonus gimmick item they're giving away in some US stores, a photo viewer. They confirm a few locations and show off a bit more of the environment.

MW2 is the only one where the multiplayer grabbed me at all, but even then I only played it casually and that basically meant I was never going to do any good with it. Wasn't helped by it being extremely exploitable - balance being off in some cases, quickscoping... but it was fun despite that. The Treyarch stuff never grabbed me - I've played WAW and Black Ops, and no doubt at some point I'll play Black Ops 2, but they always, always felt like the second cousin to the Infinity Ward games. It's notable that that feeling extended to MW3 - as Rev says, it might have Infinity Ward on the cover but that was not a game that had the polish and feel that the games before it had. Saying that, I don't really care for the series any more. It's just a franchise now, an industrial project churned out, it has no charm and is kinda coming to represent a lot of everything that is going wrong with gaming. Banging out a yearly franchise with miniscule changes and it selling millions, while other things are left to die and others chasing the buck rip it off (see the woeful Medal of Honor: Warfighter for the latest crack at it).

A whiff? He's basically what would come out of the other side if you pushed Blair and a pug dog through the machine from the Fly.

Skyfall improves on a second viewing but the problems are still there. A good 8/10 film that doesn't feel like a Bond film somehow.

Just had to knock up an email that's really pissed me off but shouldn't. I'm due a bonus for the job I was doing until about 3 weeks ago when my contract finished, and I've not yet received it (and had no idea when I was likely to). Emailing the guy I was doing most of the work for basically asking 'Um... wheres my bonus?' is an awkward balancing act given I don't want to appear either accusatory, presumptive, or desperate... but theres also a distinct chance it's not an inconsiderably sum of money so I kinda need to know when I'm likely to get it.

Picture ain't working, BOF. I'm not a Star Wars fan (at all - one of the most hideously overrated series of all time) so I guess the whole deal isn't the kind of thing to really get my blood pumping. It could be interesting to see what Disney decide to do with the series, my own thoughts are the series is probably better left alone as far as cinema goes. Incidentally, the idea that George Lucas will be able to complete some long in the planning 9 film saga with these is a joke - he's fiddled with the series so often anything he says with regards a canon or whatever is nonsense. The thing started out as the saga of Mace Windu when he first took it to execs, and he's also famous for adding in characters and creatures so he could sell more toys. And thats without even considering that he doesn't have a **** clue how to plot anything - hence why the prequels (also known as 'I'm making it up as I go along' - another shot at the idea there was some great plan to the series beyond 'Make a shitload of money') are awful. Disney will have him as a consultant but will do whatever the **** they like. There is an 'expanded universe' story that is considered canon that continues past Return of the Jedi, but that will be binned.

I hope he proves me wrong scoring against better opposition.

Is our defence improving? In combination with the injuries, it looks pretty hopeless to me.

Ha, Episode 7 announced within the hour of the deal being announced. Like **** clockwork. Edit - Scratch that, 3 new films announced. There won't be any corpse to flog at that rate.

Disney have just bought Lucasfilm. $4bn. Star Wars is about to get its dead horse flogged a little more...

While I don't think it's a bad film by any means, Skyfall has been given a very easy ride imo. It just isn't as good as it's being made out to be. Talk of it being the best Bond film is nonsense.

There's an increasing whiff of hysteria over the racism in football thing. I do not believe that, had the previous few controversies not come to pass, this story would exist. As it is, has Jason Roberts made a bit more hay on the back of this? He's not missed any other opportunities recently to further his media career...

Loads of promo dummy sleeves are leaking all over the place that confirm that, shock horror, spring release date. April/May it is.

Nexus 10 is a pug ugly beast, but fairly impressive spec wise. Interesting theres no portrait pictures of it in use, I suspect it might look a bit daft. The pricing on Nexus 4 is a real cat amongst the pigeons move.

I don't believe Derren, unfortunately. Theres pretty much no doubt in my mind the bloke was in on it. He makes far too much of a protest to 'Oh don't spoil it, it's not nice' in that rebuttal, for me. He actually lies at the start - he says Steven wasn't just playing along. Unfortunately, part of what makes any degree of hypnotism work, is the desire to play along. As much as I want it to be real, its not in my view. And I don't believe it makes a particularly convincing case for it to not be.

I've actually just watched the show. Yeah... everything about it just doesn't add up for me. His reactions to everything are totally unbelievable to me. The stuff in the bus - he's totally still, he almost at times looks like he's about to laugh, and if I were him I'd be on the verge too because the explosions where so obviously cheap petrol explosions you'd have to immediately start to question it. I do not buy him in the whole thing - his reactions are far too reserved, he doesn't swear, he doesn't lose his shit, etc etc. The standard of acting from those around him is **** terrible too - the girl talks like someone who thinks people talk like a badly written 1950s pulp fiction novel. I also have some issue with the planting of the stories around him - we know what media is like these days, and they seemed to set this guy up as someone who is interested in popular science. Surely he would wonder why only XFM is making a deal of this meteor, or why theres only 1 mention of it on Channel 4's Sunday brunch, or why nobody at work is talking about it? And so on... theres too many problems which prevent my mind buying it. Anywho... it could be a coincidence that the guy is an aspiring actor, perhaps the type of person likely to be useful to such an endeavour is the same kind of personality that would want to be an actor. I'm just not so sure... If he is a plant, I hope he's not intending on making a career of acting because I've believed in characters in school plays more than I buy his 'apocalyptic survivor'. As for the signing of waivers and the like, I'm fairly sure you would need to be somewhat conscious of what you were signing up for for that to be in any way binding. And of course theres the insurance thing like, what if he had brained an actor, or decided it was all hopeless and cut his wrists, or decided to just not play along with the script they set up? And so on... there just is no way that it's above board as portrayed imo. The Hero one is absolutely terrible by the way - I honestly didn't even believe the bloke actually was the bloke he was portrayed to be, his home life just didn't seem to add up somehow and there was a very 'acting badly' feel about everything when he was just being observed before they dropped the hero scenario on him (he went to work, in the insurance game, dressed like he was off to bar, fashion jeans, beanie etc). And then the stuff they did was just... well... shit. Don't waste your time. I'll watch the second part of the apocalypse show but totally as an entertainment thing rather than believing at any level theres anything to it beyond a bunch of really bad actors and a **** awful narrative and production quality. Oh and the bottle thing is a red herring - all that proves is that it was edited, which is to be expected despite the show desperately trying to put across a feeling of a straight, real time narrative.

Hey, theres a chance it could all be a coincidence. Or the whole thing might turn out to be a bait and switch, who knows. Personally, I doubt it. I've still not watched the show myself, I'm not sure I want to anymore. I really, really didn't enjoy the Hero at 30,000 Feet one he did, where it was so bloody obvious it wasn't above board that I just couldn't enjoy a moment of it. I imagine this is more of the same. That one was... so bad, so completely unbelieable, so unconvincing in any element that I simply didn't buy a moment. There's not a single tangible, believable hook I could latch onto that made me want to believe the rest. He'd flirted with this before now - the guy who is hypnotised to believe he's in a video game shooter, the Heist one - and I felt that those were weak moments in what he'd done as well, I'm surprised he's decided that that is what he needs to stake his name on really. Not a single one is particularly convincing.

Not used it myself yet but, as said in the Surface thread, it's sops to being a tablet OS really don't play for a mouse and keyboard user. Even doing a course designed to inform people likely to be selling Windows 8 I was struck that Microsoft were struggling to sell me on the concepts they'd got. Some of the stuff it does, like having regions of the screen having functions associated with them, only translate to a gesture, touch based interface, to my mind, and serve to only be clunky when you transfer them to a keyboard and mouse. I fear this will be a massive misstep for Redmond.

Link The main bloke in the show is an actor, it appears. His profile on a casting site since it was discovered has changed a few times trying to obscure things (the name changed, physical description changed), and Channel 4 has subsequently tried to do so themselves by saying he's not 'a professional actor', which isn't really the point - the guy might not pay the bills being an actor but he has a casting site profile for a reason, presumably. He's also been linked with a BBC production with Adam Buxton IIRC. There are also a number of legal problems with doing a show like this that would prevent it being made - you're basically not allowed to hypnotise someone and place them in a situation where they would feel endangered or distressed for entertainment purposes, and the point has been raised that, were it real, were you to convince someone there had been an apocalyptic event, would you want to be an actor playing a zombie around this person? You couldn't possibly know if he would try to smash your brain in with the nearest object. Derren's TV stuff has become increasingly 'out there' and unbelievable, it seems that this one might be the one that rumbles the lot. His live shows are a different matter - he's basically doing magic tricks (incredibly well) that in many cases are fairly fool proof, not requiring stooges. The TV stuff he's done in recent years... not so much.

Ha, no worries - I'm blaming typing that up on my phone... point stands regardless. As for deals, barring maybe one deal per retailer, Christmas tends to not to be the best time to buy. Retailers will try make up a slightly bigger cut or try to get rid of stock sitting around on their bundles over that buying period (Gamestation's top bundles last Christmas tended to be bulked out with loads of copies of things we'd been overstocked on, NFS: The Run in the main). If you see a good deal now, and you'd be happy with it, I think it's a good bet to go for it.

The brother has been set up by Agents, they kidnapped him weeks before and brainwashed him to the point he would be 'triggered' on hearing the word 'swordfish' to access the bank account of his brother where they had secretly stashed millions of pounds earned from the sale of secret Martian tech to Jupiter that al-Hilli was privy to. Its all a cover up. The truth is out there, you can see it in Cameron's Jupiterian Luciferian lizard eyes.

Cloud Atlas opened in the US this week. Highly anticipated and critically lauded following showings at the Toronto Film Festival, it's made by the guys behind the Matrix and based on an extremely well received novel by David Mitchell which was called unfilmable. As such the Wachowski's had to raise the funds to make it on their own, eventually making this a $100m indie movie in effect. It's done terribly at the box office, $9m. Destined to be a flop it seems. Doesn't open over here till well into 2013 - it's ****. A shame because it seems to be have been supremely ambitious, and a really different project, and genuinely looks well made, but looks to just not be able to pull in an audience. Admittedly, the premise of the film (it's basically the same cast playing different characters across 6 separate storylines, switching race and even genders between plotlines that span a range of time periods from 19th Century to a distant future) is a bit... out there and hard to grasp but it'd have been nice if it could have opened big. Will need to do insanely well in other territories to get it's money back. Speaking of novel adaptations, watching Skyfall the other night the trailers included Ang Lee's take on Life of Pi. I didn't even know a film was in the making but what I know of that novel, and what I've now seen in the trailer - that film better have cost the money down the back of Ang Lee's sofa because if it didn't, that's a flop and a half.