Chindie

Sperm.

Oh I know. It's just that the XBLA release is fairly anticipated and there are tweaks from the free PC version. Looks better for a start.

Confirmed as a 12A in the UK (surprise surprise) and the running time has been confirmed too - 164 minutes. 2 and 3/4 hours. Ouch. A lot is going to be going on this film, and it's going to have to be to not make that right on the edge of bum number.

I'm hoping against hope the codename it's got, Durango, stays in some capacity. It's a fun word. Won't happen, but I can hope.

Spelunky is out this week for XBLA if anyone has a masochistic gaming itch they need to scratch. Platforming in randomly generated levels with 1 life - die and back to the beginning you go. One of those games you'll never get some(many?) of the achievements - one of them is finish the game (in it's entirety) in 8 minutes. Which is doable theoretically but quite mindnumbingly difficult.

I don't 'get' Halo. They don't grab me. I've played the first, on PC and now the 360, Halo 3 and Reach, and while I can't say they're bad games (they aren't) theres just something about them that stops me loving them. The Flood always used to kill those game stone dead for me, making the game become an instant chore. But Reach doesn't really suffer from that and still... just something about it.

Word is that Halo might be borrowing some elements of COD's multiplayer IIRC. In fairness, while the COD franchise has done nothing new inside 5 years, Halo hasn't exactly innovated it's socks off either. I'm not convinced 4 is going to be a marked change from it's predecessors - the formula is popular, they're not going to fiddle with it too much until they have to. An awful lot of this years releases have slipped to early next year now. Could lead to an interesting period from say, September through to about May next year.

It's a bit of a novelty to be signing someone we really don't know much about so welcome Karim. Having seen a few Dutch opinions I'm not totally sure he's going to be a raving success but it seems he has talent so hopefully he can make that tell at a higher, more physical level.

Watched the first part of the BBC's 'Hollow Crown' season earlier. They're doing the series of 4 history plays Shakespeare did that 'chronicle' the fall of Richard II and rise of Henry IV, his reign, and then his son's war in France (so Richard II, Henry IV Part One, Henry IV Part Two and Henry V). It was great - I'm not a huge Shakespeare guy, let alone his historical stuff, but it was just superb. It looked fantastic, everyone knocked their roles out of the park, and it stayed engrossing. The flaws it had were flaws of the subject matter - I've never enjoyed a lot of Shakespearean dialogue, which is made worse in Richard II because the entire thing is in verse. And its nature as a character study crossed with a political intrigue narrative leaves little place for action or spectacle, but it was still a really good watch. My understanding of these plays is that Richard II is one of the least popular of the series and also considered by most, the worst, so it bodes well for coming adaptations. Especially as Tom Hiddlestone (aka Loki) is playing Henry V and from the ads and trailers looks like he's enjoying himself. Well worth getting into I suspect, the first adaptation will be iPlayer for a while since it's a special production, I recommend it if you don't absolutely despise Shakespeare.

Steam should be doing their (utterly mental, usually) summer sale any day now, worth keeping an eye out. I'd like to take advantage more of Steam but my desktop is 6 years old now and slowly dying anyway, and my laptop isn't a gaming machine by any stretch (and is 4 years old itself), so I'm not really in the position to.

Perhaps, perhaps not. A lot depends on the nature of the attack. If the intention is, to not go into particular detail, use fear to repell occupiers (perhaps through great brutality, lets say), then yes. If the intent is 'break' the occupiers, to make occupation no longer feasible for instance (for arguments sake, simply managing to wage battle to such a degree that it becomes too costly to continue to occupy those lands), and I would argue also that there was not an (from the perspective of the natives) unintentional element of fear added to the equation by those actions by the natives, then no - the natives simply fought back to encourage the enemy to make a logical decision - 'This is too difficult/it isn't worth it/we are unable to continue', rather than send a message through fear to repel invaders. Its irrelevant how one side sees it or not. That isn't the point. Terrorism isn't just a label. It's a methodology, a process, a tactic. Perhaps I might agree with the natives fight. If they chose to run around bombing targets, military or not, to scare compliance into their adversaries, they're still terrorists.

It's not really a question of semantics. What I said was correct. The phrase 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter' is largely a sop to feelings of unease at decrying one thing we dislike, while accepting it when we like it's cause. Both are terrorists at the end of the day, precisely because both chose to use fear to bring about their aims. As said, it's a methodology, and thats all there is to it. Choose to use that methodolgy, you're a terrorist. No semantics about it, beyond the obvious.

No. All terrorists are terrorists. Terrorism is a methodology, it is more than simply a label to put on an enemy. Someone fighting for things we might agree with, feel are right, feel are just and proper, who chooses to use fear to bring about those ends, is a terrorist. It just so happens we rather like his cause. One mans terrorist, is every mans terrorist.

Mandela was a terrorist. He co-founded the armed wing of the ANC and co-ordinated bombing campaigns. He's pretty much the definition of a terrorist, despite the fact that he fought for was clearly a good and right thing.

*is atheist, has no trouble with clamour to place restriction on religious freedom in all honesty* It's a step to allow the undermining of religion. All for it. Making it harder for them to physically stamp their existance on a child before it even knows what the ****, is an excellent move.

Thats exactly what I was thinking on my 'actually, maybe... just maybe, it could work'. I used to love Bucky O'Hare. Admittedly I was about 6 at the time but damnit it was good.

An excellent decision. And as soon as I saw the title I was going to make a 'cut above' related joke but damnit, late to the draw... The analogy to abortion is an absurdity.

Italy hopefully. I don't think I could stand further Spanish success on the back of that style.

Me neither, but I really would like to see them try. It'd be hilarious. There would be no middle ground - raging success for how utterly different it was, or complete unmitigated disaster, the type of disaster spoken of in hushed tones in Hollywood. Howard the Duck-esque, perhaps, especially if they really did put in Rocket Raccoon. The other front runner for the other unannounced project is Black Panther. Which could work (and it'd be nice to see a film focusing on a relatively unknown character, and moreover a black hero), but they'd have to try very hard to stop people going 'Hang on... this is Batman...'.

Comic Con is coming up in a couple of weeks which means loads of stuff about movies that are coming up (and not necessarily just comic movies either - they tend to use it as a place to announce/promote pretty much anything that has a bit of a scifi/fantasy/'geek' following) will start to come out. If you're a fan of the Marvel films, a lot of stuff is going to be announced/shown/promoted. Marvel are apparently keen to maintain a 2 film a year production cycle for the next 'Phase' of their cinematic universe (the films leading up to the Avengers being consider 'Phase 1'), and we already know that that is starting next year with Iron Man 3, and Thor 2, the former of which is already filming, and then Cap 2 in 2014 (and all of these 3 films have release dates already which is kinda mental), and Avengers 2 in 2015 is a near certainty. But no-ones sure what is being released with Cap in 2014. And Marvel's President who is pushing the movies hard, is one record saying they've got 2 unannounced projects to come. He's hinted at doing Ant-Man, which Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright really wants to do (though is now doing the next film with Pegg and Frost for release next year). And he's also been hinting at wanting to a Marvel 'space epic'. A few sites have today thought they've stumbled on at least what one of those unannounced projects are, and it's the 'Space Epic'. They reckon Marvel are going to do a Guardians of the Galaxy movie. And they plan to use that film to expand on and introduce Thanos, the villain who cameos at the end of the Avengers movie, to set him up as the villain for the next Avengers film proper. If that is true, Marvel have either gone mental, or are so confident in their plans it'll be mad but like nothing else in comic book movies. The Guardians of the Galaxy are a team of really low rent Marvel heroes. One of their number is a **** raccoon that is handy with all types of firearms, and swears a lot. Another one is an Ent, basically. And all the others that have been associated with that team are shit too. The suggestion also appears to be that they'll chuck in a character that has appeared alongside the Guardians, Nova, who is basically a space copper with a few superpowers. If thats true... well... it'll be a bit different to whats gone before it. Makes sense if you want to set up Thanos in such a way that the fanboys won't go mental, but I can't help thinking its a really hard sell to most audiences. I kinda hope it's true just to see what the hell they'd come up with... As for the other unannounced project, best bets appear to be Ant-Man or Dr Strange. Dr Strange might be fun, it'd be like watching a Tool video on high quality LSD if done properly. Or the star gate sequence from 2001.

Dishonored is starting to pique my interest. Deus Ex in Steampunk/magic addled fascist Victorian London fantasy land, basically. You play a former bodyguard for the Empress, framed for her murder, who is then given supernatural powers, allowing his escape and becoming embroiled in a revolutionary resistance movement. You get the usual set of power, time slowing etc, as well as others like an ability to possess more or less any living creature which opens up lots of avenues for stealthy gameplay - using a fish to swim up a drain to enter a building on the sly, for instance, is the one they've shown off the most, but they've also shown possessing a target you've been assigned to assassinate so you can make him walk out onto a balcony where you wait to push him to his death. Looks very interesting and seems to have a multitude of options being made for missions. It's even appears they're not just doing a stealth approach, and a guns blazing approach, there are numerous ways of doing your missions stealthily, multiple ways of brute forcing it. About my only worries for it are that the art style doesn't work for me (it's too stylised, too comic/cartoon-y. A few notches towards 'realism' and it would be perfect, especially as I love the designs they've got, they've just chosen the wrong style choice for those designs. I can't help wondering if they've made that style choice out of convenience/necessity with todays hardware...) and also that the amount of options you get, a large number of powers and weapons available, looks slightly overwhelming. Looking good though, check it out. IT really does look like a game that wanted to do what Deus Ex promised when it first arrived, as opposed to what Deus Ex became.

Young was just as bad, he actually looked like he crapped himself Agreed. And I called him missing too

I don't think it matters all that much in the end. Had Alves walked up first or third or whenever, like he did, and I had the chance, I'd have stuck a lot of money on him missing. You could tell he was not keen on taking it which I think plays a very big role in taking a pen, if you're confident you'll score, you at least put it on target I think. He looked like he was walking to the gallows, with a heavy heart. Whereas Nani went up with an air that said 'I'm either going to score or kill Casillas with this pen'.

To be fair, the poor animation is something that plagues Skyrim (and the Elder Scrolls games generally), I'm not surprised the problem has extended into new models. And the not being able to go through doors and such makes it basically the same as the werewolf - in dungeons, navigation in the wolf form is a nightmare, because the character model is too big it gets caught on the geometry. IIRC it had the same trouble with doors too. Reading on Dawnguard it seems to be 'Just more Skyrim', and depending onn how you feel about the game that may, or may not, be worth your 1600 moonbucks.

I don't read that as a 'rule of order' as such - to me, it says, as I said, that should the game go to penalties, the teams themselves are responsible for sorting out who is taking one and when. It doesn't suggest to me that once you say Alves is going 4th, you cannot go 'Actually, no, lets have him go 3rd'. Basically, it's saying the takers and when they take them is on the team to decide as they wish. Not that once decided it's a binding decision.