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a guy who posted about them described them as "a gay AC/DC or a straight Queen.. I'm not sure which."

You know the band actually said that themselves - the story goes that one time an interviewer asked something like "would you say you're the gay AC/DC?", and one of the band answered "nah, we're the straight Queen". Good line. Fun band, also, though I wish the second half of their album was as fantastic as the first.

I just noticed that this conversation is over six months old.

I probably should've put 'bad' in inverted commas - I don't think MIs 3 and 4 are terrible or anything, just rather lame and entirely unnecessary - LEC's laziest adventure efforts by far. Their existence certainly lowers the status of the series, and even harms the reputation of the first two games a little, which is a real shame.

I wrote a big rant here once on why I think, as a sequel, 3 was pretty much a disaster. In summary: shockingly inconsistent, point-missing characterisations (in terms it's predecessors), largely uninspired and forced humour, and having no real story or reason to exist beyond explaining away MI2's excellent ending in the blandest, most literal-minded fashion possible.

I personally think 4 generally did a slightly better job of recreating the general tone of 1 and 2, and the thing at least had a story of sorts to tell, but sadly the game fell to pieces with that godawful final third.

I probably shouldn't be laying into MI3 every chance I get, but with that game I really feel like I'm trapped in a big Emperor's New Clothes situation.

You know George Lucas has practically nothing to do with anything Lucasarts does.

Also, Monkey Island 3 was as bad as 4, if not worse.

Yeah, it wasn't b/w but there was a version made in the 50's set in WW2 (I think) America. It wasn't all that great, but it does show that the basic story can be shifted over to the states without too much trouble. It's the modern day setting that bothers me a bit.

Also, I'm not sure how they'll handle the ending. From what I can remember, the way things are resolved isn't very cinematic.

I think it's a little ignorant to say that because an American is redoing the film it will be "Americanised"...along with the obviously negative connotations you're including in that statement.Ã, 

It's nothing to do with an American making the film. It's just when a novel set in Victorian England is relocated to 2005 urban America with an all-American star, I don't think it's out of order to suggest it's likely to be an 'Americanised-adaptation'.

I'm not saying it'll necessarily be bad or dumbed down because of that, just that the change risks turning the story into just another stock 'Aliens invade the US' film.

I'm impressed Paramount was able to keep this movie out of the radar for so long. I had no idea this movie was in production.

I think the reason it was kept off the radar is because the whole production process for this film seems to have been an insanely short one.

I think the project was only officially confirmed about five or six months ago, filming only started in September or thereabouts, and they're still expecting to release the thing in only another six or seven months. Either everything has been incredibly smoothly planned out, or they're rushing it and hoping for the best.

I have to wonder how much the world really needs a modernised, Americanised War Of The Worlds film, though. Isn't that basically what Independence Day was? A faithful adaptation would probably be more interesting.

Either way - here's hoping for a bit of Jeff Wayne action on the soundtrack.

Kevin Smith has knocked out some decent bits of dialogue, and Chasing Amy was entertaining enough in its doesn't-want-to-admit-it's-just-a-generic-romantic-comedy way, but come on! The guy just isn't a very good filmmaker! He's just a passable sit-com writer with ideas above his station.

I could've sworn he said he'd never do another Jay and Silent Bob movie, but given that every time he tries to broaden his horizons it ends in disaster, I guess he doesn't have anything else to fall back on.

It must be hard not to relentlessly milk your fanbase when your fans are so ridiculously easy to please. Looks like it was too hard for Kevin.

Favourate dying word:

Brouhaha (preferably spoken in drawn-out, over-dramatic fashion, with rolled 'r's etc).


Favourate dead words:

Blaggard (as in: "have at ye, blaggard!").

Swive (i.e. 'to screw').

I played around with this for a while, but no matter how much I customise it, the toolbar layout just feels less appealing to me then the default IE layout. And it can't seem to download the plug-ins needed to play Yahoo chess, and I'm not about to start using a browser that can't run Yahoo chess.

On the critical logo issue... I personally think the Firefox logo is, in fact, just a fox. On fire. Hooray for literalism!

I love most of the Final Fantasies I've played (especially I, V, VI and VII), even though I often feel like the developers are putting as much effort into trying to bore me as they are to blow me away.

I mean, those idiotic unskippable 'summon' sequences really hurt the otherwise wonderful VII and pretty much destroyed VIII. I also generally see the whole 'random encounters' thing as a boring, outdated gameplay concept that should've been weeded out of the series years ago.

But even so, when the games hit their stride, the characters, epic storylines and unfathomably beautiful music (and, hey, sometimes even the gameplay) just drag me in like few games ever do.

My all time favourite would probably have to be Zelda - Link's Awakening on the Game Boy. That was just a beautiful game. Action RPGs in general work better then turn-based combat systems, I think.

By the way, I have this community to thank for leading me to the wonderful Terranigma (which I'd never even heard of). That game just kept surprising me from start to finish. Shame it's so insanely hard, though.

As for western RPGs, I've always had a big love for Exile/Avernum shareware games, from www.spidweb.com. They're sometimes a bit bogged down by fiddley stat-shenanigans, but I've always found them an incredibly engrossing and entertaining bunch of games.

My posts are too long.

Soundclub is my favourite. It's just incredibly easy to use, and can be very versatile if you make your own samples. I use it all the time, now, just for the sheer joy of using it.

'Tis here:

www.bluemoon.ee/history/scwin

I think it's quite good. Maybe little low on content, but there are some memorable bits of imagary in there. It's looks like it might be moving back towards the old whimsical mythological style, in contrast to the somewhat more generic sci-fi shenanigans that made up much of the first two prequels (though I do think I and II are both unjustly despised).

Kind of surprising to see Palpatine suddenly back to his Return Of The Jedi self, though. I'm not sure how they're planning on explaining that.

Tracked down via the magic of Google's computer-wizardry (tm):

Chalmers: Good lord, what is happening in there?
Seymour: Aurora Borealis?
Chalmers: Aurora Borealis? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your kitchen?
Skinner: Yes!
Chalmers: ...May I see it?
Skinner: No.

Bart: What do you care about good comics? All you ever buy is Casper the Wimpy Ghost.
Lisa: I think it's sad that you equate friendliness with wimpiness, and I hope it'll keep you from ever achieving true popularity.
Bart: Well, you know what I think? I think Casper is the ghost of
Richie Rich.
Lisa: Hey, they do look alike!
Bart: Wonder how Richie died.
Lisa: Perhaps he realized how hollow the pursuit of money really is and took his own life.

Don't mind me, I'm just sticking a post here for avatar completeness value.

You're right - I hope this thing is going to be reasonably long. I mean, after the end of the war the strip's been focused almost entirely on Radd. I hope all of the supporting characters are given a satisfying send off.

Gosh, Dave, that was an amazing story, and vividly told - enough to cut through my cynicism and drive home exactly why we have memorial days in the first place.

I hope I didn't come across as offensively blasé about the whole thing in that last post, and I certainly don't want to downplay the value of people's direct experiences.

Don't forget to gather your friends and family around your computer screen for the final episode tomorrow!

While I'm here, (and because I can't be bothered to work through all of the comics linked to here), are there any other good online comics that are primarily story driven, with proper beginnings and endings, as with Kid Radd?

Funny comics are probably ten a penny, but it was the great story and character arcs that really made me fall in love with KR - indeed by the end i'd grown to love those characters more then my own family.

Stop typing right now and MOURN, you shameful bastards!

No, really I completely agree with most of you guys - I found the widespread, but largely unspoken "time to just let it go" atmosphere yesterday quite refreshing. It looks like before too long the date 11th of September might just be able to exist as a regular day again.

It's not as if anyone's ever going to suddenly forget about the whole thing, anyway - if you're interested in worldwide current affairs in the slightest, I doubt a single week goes by without you being reminded of it in some small way.

I think we're long past the stage where your average person should feel any obligation to go out of their way to recognise the date. I certainly didn't.

To be honest I always hate feeling obligated to feel emotions about things I'm no longer all that bothered about in any case. The whole Princess Diana fiasco was the worst example of that. I'd ceased to give more then a vague shit about the whole thing about half an hour after I heard about it, but then they had to spin it out for WEEKS, with Elton John personally going to every British person's house and forcing them to weep about it at knifepoint.

"The community also has given me herpes"

Damnit, I was about to make that *exact* same remark! Right down to the disease. Though admittedly I wasn't going to use the word "also", so I give you full credit for that.

Anyway, I wouldn't really call myself 'a part of the community', but I've gotten quite a bit out of these forums over the last couple of months. Same old story, really: like a lot here, I was interested in game design as a kid but drifted away from it over the years. AGS and these forums helped to switch that part of my brain back on.

Also, this might be the only game related forum I've ever found that isn't filled with either incomprehensable idiots or just people who have practically no respect or interest in any game made before 1998 or thereabouts. So it was quite refreshing to find a community of people who are consistently smart and often have interesting and well expressed thoughts and insights into games of all eras, game-design and various other creative outlets.

My only complaint is that this general forum strikes me as being a little reserved and overly restricted to computery issues - I often get the impression that lots of people here would have plenty to say about all kinds of varied subjects, but just aren't really saying them. But I guess you can't have everything.

I admit I'll always have a fondness for Moore because his films were the ones I grew up with on TV. And The Spy Who Loved Me is probably my personal favourate Bond film overall.

Aside from the campiness (which I can tolerate in small doses) Moore's main problem was that he just didn't know when to stop. By the end of his run, he'd reduced Bond to a late-fifties letch, doddering around in a cardigan, feebly chasing after 18 year olds and their mothers in truly wretched fashion. He was almost as bad as Lazenby in that scene where Bond takes a peak at a Playboy mag. Bond reading Playboy? For shame!

Timothy Dalton was okayish, but dispite having that nice hard edge, he just seems to lack a certain charisma. It doesn't help that Bronon pretty much made him redundant by clearly being able to do everything Dalton could do and more.

It's a real shame he missed out on the role back in the 80's, because Brosnon would really have had a chance to shine in the Dalton movies, in a way he's been largely deprived of in his own.

Like every sane person I have a very bad feeling about where the series is heading. Brosnon was so great in the role that you knew they could release any old shite and you'd still at least have a credible Bond performance to rely on. Without him, what's left?

If Brosnon's not coming back, they need to take a long break to reassess the situation. I can't believe they're being so stupid as to stick rigidly to a 2005 release date when no one involved has more then a vague idea what the hell they should be doing with the franchise.