Selfsurprise

In regards to books, everything written by A.M. Homes, most notably in her short story collection Things You Should Know. Her fiction has a way of being firmly grounded in reality yet simultaneously presenting an "off" situation or tone without delving into complete fantasy. You come away from her stories with more ambiguities than answers that no amount of re-reading can resolve. In regards to movies, almost anything the Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul has ever produced. I've watched Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives on several occasions now and I'm still pleasantly bewildered by it. Do you prefer the artwork of H.R. Giger or Francis Bacon?

Sod it, this one deserves a Youtube link. YKN1AGx19Kw In my humble (albeit extremely biased) opinion, easily rates as one of the best hundred songs in the world. The album Touched isn't too shabby either.

That game looks pretty gonzo and the fact I haven't played a side-scrolling beat em' up for bloody years now meant the title did intrigue me. I haven't checked but if there is a PS4 version of the game I might just purchase it. After all my recent point n' click/walking simulator playing I'm in tnhe mood for something blood-thirstier. I'd personally like to see what he has to say about some games on the list that I've actually played. The Last Door (which was extremely good in my opinion), The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (which I really enjoyed despite it being a bit short), and Firewatch (which I must confess I found mildly disappointing).

My spirit guide is a Bush Baby.

Summer Cramp by Albinobeach

The Digital Genocide of '16... :3 A part of me will miss the Romine's and their hilarious hijinks. Maybe Steam Greenlight is like Dragonball Z. Once you defeat one universe destroying supervillain another more powerful takes their place.

I'd definitely watch it. I'm afraid I don't know anything about modding or animating with computer game assets, so my support for the probject will have to remain largely "abstract", sorry about that! On the subject of Mind series, thanks for the link to your own work. I'll have a peep at it later and let you know what I think of it the next time I'm on the forum.

Beef Massaman Curry.

I'm confident I could name twenty or more off the top of my head. Blacksticks Blue is one of all time favourites, a kind of strong soft blue cheese from Lancashire. What's your favourite Italian dish or food product?

Norway is so metal that crosses invert themselves upon crossing it's borders... :3

Organ Trail.

He includes me in his plans for world domination.

They're all winners if you ask me. On a similar note how likely do you think it is that all the participating athletes in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo will be cats? Skateboarding cats, that is.

I love BTG and Helio, but then again I am one of those filthy console plebiscites previously alluded to, so if anyone disagrees with my sentiments feel free to disregard my unworthy pedestrian opinion. YOU CAN'T HAVE FUN ON THE INTERNET HELIO! LORE IS SERIOUS BUSINESS! :3 I especially like your Oriental Super Mutants idea. There could be traitorous offshoot faction called the Wangliang (after a particular variety of countryside-roaming demon believed to cause fevers) and are considered outcasts by other super mutants due to their dishonourable practices and usage of poisoned weaponry.

Crikey Helio! Way to dropkick me into a more enlightened state! :3 They all sound like exactly the kind of channels that I can make time for, thank you for bringing them to my attention. I'm particularly intrigued by the one called Games as Literature. As a big fan of the horribly labelled and often dismissed "walking simulator" genre I often feel as though reviewers slightly miss the point in regards to the real value of these games as a means of delivering narrative. Certainly not all titles of this type are inherently good at it, but bringing the subject back to Stirling I found myself disagreeing with much of his criticism levelled towards Everybody's Gone To The Rapture. The slow pace and sense of arriving after the titular events for me functioned as a kind of interactive self-propelling alternative to a science fiction short story told from an admittedly unusual post-situational perspective. My low expectations and prejudices towards gaming/Youtube culture can be overridden by any worthwhile channels I stumble upon or are kindly informed of. Off the top of my head I'm afraid I can only recommend one Youtuber to you in payment for the five offerings you've given. Are you aware of a channeler by the name of RagnarRox? He creates very detailed and analytical videos about games and films with speculative and philosophical underpinnings. By far his best videos are found within his Monsters of the Week series, in which he not only discusses various exceptional game enemies and the influences/symbolism of their conception, but makes comparative commentary regarding their influences outside of gaming and ponders on exactly what it is that makes them so disturbing. Also anybody who writes "if you got a problem with anything, just be nice, you'd be surprised how far this gets you in life" in their about me page gets a thumbs up in my book. CjjxBIHefbk (^ I knew I couldn't literally be the only person who liked SOMA! )

Whilst I realize there is already music general thread, that particular topic seems to be a semi catatonic state the majority of the time and is primarily filled with users random projects and occasional bits of news. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with that, but I thought we could do with a place to share and discuss our favourite bands and artists. Whether it's groups you've loved for as long as you can recall or acts (old or new) you've just discovered, this is the thread for you! Assuming this thread gets any kind of response I'll consider regularly updating it with posts both an all time favourite band I've liked for a long time alongside a more recent discovery. Youtube videos and links to Bandcamp/Soundcloud pages are always welcome. GENOCIDE ORGAN German power electronics group Genocide Organ are as influential within industrial music as they are contentious and misunderstood. Their seemingly unironic usage of highly political themes, literature and imagery often leads to the act being labelled as extremists or far-right nutcases, but in fact belies a wicked sense of Teutonic humour and a commitment to presenting the horrors of the modern ideological landscape in stark and uncompromising terms. For me personally that's not really what attracts me to Genocide Organ and other equally foreboding electronic groups. At their best GO make extremely memorable tracks with little more than distorted looping samples, terrifyingly ab-human vocals, harrowing dialogue from myriad sources, dread inducing primitive ambience and artfully arranged noise. To my ears some of the band's tracks like Hail Amerika and Viva la Guerre are as catchy as the most melodious and anthemic songs, and have a much more drastic influence on my imagination. I can understand how the band's morally questionable reputation may precede your expectations and put you off, but if want the musical equivalent of visceral performance art or aberrant horror entertainment you'd be doing yourself a disservice by overlooking GO. 2jAI-734O-c WOOD SPIDER I'm biased to a tee in regards to lo-fi music of any genre if it sounds as though it was recorded on soviet era equipment. New York based band Wood Spider make something best described as chamber punk or freak folk, offering as they do a kind of vicious and salivating brand of acoustic raucousness. The song I've chosen is from a short but undeniably gnarly four-track tape called The American Cassette though you could do a lot worse things with your time than check out their other records, particularly the album In The Thick Of It, the best song therein being Shifting Gears in my humble opinion : https://woodspider.bandcamp.com/ 0vUa7RhW94Q

Sorry Selfsurprise but this really rubbed me the wrong way. Firstly you should never associate a character with how a person is IRL as characters are often exaggerated and serve no basis for reality by any stretch of the imagination. Secondly where did you get the idea that he was lazy misogynist and closet homophobe? Having watched Jim Sterling's content for a long time now I happen to know he's actually quite liberal. I know, although re-reading my post I can see several typos and omissions I will see to. I'm fully aware of his liberal leanings and that's one of the pleasant surprises I discovered upon actually watching his videos. I was merely put off because gaming and Youtube culture is usually so utterly abysmal.

7/10, this takes me back to my EBM fandom days. I first got into the band via the song Perpetual from their Matter + Form album, and if I'm not mistaken this was from the album after that one? Good find Username! v6IKPhU1nrY

Time seems like a luxury commodity these days, and I have days when my time-managing skills are just off, especially if it's been a hideous week at work. You want to do something productive and meaningful with your days off, but the urge to melt into a puddle of ex-human slurry is often too overriding. I get into the habit of specific points in the day when I'm not doing anything else. If I'm slowly making my way through a certain book in sporadic five to twenty minute intervals throughout the day then my more deliberate reading sessions in my free time feel like a treat. As for Warhammer novels, do you prefer the traditional fantasy style of the Warhammer setting or the grim sci-fi of Warhammer 40,000? If it's former then I'm much more familiar with the previous edition before all this world-ending Age of Sigmar stuff happened. I really enjoyed The Rise of Nagash trilogy by Mike Lee, chronicling the life (and undeath) of the much reviled Khemri necromancer. I'm extremely biased towards anything Skaven related (Warhammer's ubiquitous race of Ratmen) and in particular one of their champions Queek Headtaker - an utterly insane and uncharacteristically fearless member of Clan Mors. I'd suggest Guy Haley's The Rise of the Horned Rat, David Guymer's Headtaker and all of C.L. Werner's books about Grey Seer Thanquol. Let me know which races you're into to I'll pick my brains for good stuff relating to them. In regards to the latter setting some of my undisputed favourites are the Sandy Mitchell novels about the Imperial Guard Commissar Ciaphas Cain, a hero of the Imperium whose outward bravery and valiance hides his gallows humour and self-serving cynicism. He's a badass who ironically wants nothing more than to sidestep his duties rather than face the innumerable horrors of the 41st millenium. Start with The Greater Good or The Last Ditch and if you enjoy either or both of those, look up some the other stories featuring him. Again, let me know which races and armies you're interested in. If you would rather dip your toes in both camps, then I'd recommend reading the The Best of Hammer and Bolter volumes culled from their digital magazine of the same name. The stories are by numerous authors and thus are naturally a bit hit n' miss but there's plenty of decent fare for anybody wanting to sink their teeth into the different races and cultures of the respective settings. Try suplexing him off your roof. Disclaimer: Please don't actually hurt your brother because I told you to. I don't want to be an anecdote in the Strange Deaths segment of the next Fortean Times.

Hepta End by Leiras

I've only started watching Stirling's stuff fairly recently. I was always put off by some of the rhetoric of his character that made me assume he yet another "angry gamer" and I assumed that, like most Youtubers, he was probably a lazy misogynist and closet homophobe too. But then I watched his footage of that bull fighting game Toro and found his particular brand of weary foul-mouthed exasperation different from what I was expecting. Soon after I watched a few of his Jimquisition videos and thought that he was extremely amusing (I'm a sucker for bilious world-weary humour in the vein of (Blackadder, Franky Boyle's and Rajesh Ranganathan, Freeman's Mind, etc) and for the most part pretty right on about much of appalling practices within gaming industry and culture. What sealed it for was his amazing commentary on the whole MGSV Quiet controversy. "I breathe through my skin, I breathe through my skin, vote for Donald Trump, I breathe through my skin..." I can understand why some of the userbase on Steam might feel intimidated by yet more of DH's deeply sad and desperate grasp for a shot at internet infamy, especially those who were part of the JOHN/JANE DOE list. Hopefully those concerned individuals will take a moment to look how defamation laws work in their respective countries and Arizona alike and discover they have nothing to worry about. I'm just genuinely surprised nobody has referred to this as Rominegate yet.

I hope even if you disagreed with me I'd at least like to be able to claim to have some points...

"This game wants to be Metal Ghost in the Akira: Yellow Bladerunner Edition..." I actually just got around to watching this and I really enjoyed it. I thought much of what Ross had to say about the less than believable character conduct and the suitability of "high sci-fi" elements in a prequel to a much more sober and speculative game were rather good. I did have a few thoughts to share on his criticisms of the world's fashion sense. My art-ponce senses are tingling and I hope nobody views this as an attack on his review. Maybe I just see this from a different and less technically minded point of view, because I'm used to the nebulous and often pigeonhole-proof circular evolution of art, but there was a couple of things I felt I ought to be rigorously contextualised. I feel Ross wasn't taking into account how in an increasingly globalized and non-centralised world, historical and cultural appropriation are strong underlying elements in artistic and creative industries. The market for clothing, apparel and adornment is by far the most unironic and enthusiastic proponent of this tendency towards multicultural hybridity than perhaps any other medium, both for commercial and purely artistic (not that those two things are mutually exclusive) means and ends. I personally have no problem with the idea of seemingly unlikely motifs and formalized flamboyance appearing within future clothing trends. Human nature being the fickle thing that is, tendencies and tastes are unfixed and unpredictable aspects of mass consumption. And even if we can argue that the extraordinary fashion on display is mostly the preserve of ill-defined elites, avant provocateurs and it's attendant middle-classes champing at the bit to tag along, you must take even the lowest earners and working classes into account in regards to it's subcultural clothing - especially when it's consciously made in opposition to the aforementioned stylistic excesses of fashion. Even then those deliberate attempts at rejecting/deriding high fashion are later appropriated by the very field that it saw itself as distanced or apart from. One of the reasons that The Fifth Element rates among my top twenty favourite films was the absolutely inspired decision to take on Jean Paul Gaultier as the movies costume designer. As a flagship member of a high fashion field of creativity he was deeply entrenched in the actual multifaceted nature of modern apparel, and was well versed in the complexities and possibilities of clothing. Given that The Fifth Element's lurid future setting effectively permitted Gaultier to go bananas on the way the cast attired themselves, Gaultier was never going to resort to the rather limited and often tellingly misinformed aesthetics of science fiction, a genre often filled to the brim with boring one-piece silver space suits and little else. By comparison to that film the apparel on display seems positively modest. I'd argue however in an age that presumably has made enormous leaps in 3D printing and manufacturing, in conjunction with the cultural and stylistic "levelling" I previously alluded to, I find the likelihood of the clothing in Human Revolution appearing in the near future extremely probable. The normalcy of origami hairstyles, lacy spot printing and outrageous collars on otherwise formal clothing don't seem so far off from reality in my mind.

It seems lately, and perhaps understandably, most conversations regarding the Silent Hill game series has been wholly negative and almost entirely on the subject of the much lauded P.T. (and it's frankly bizarre cancellation) and Konami's hideous abuses of the franchise (truly, is anything more terrifying in the game's universe than that screeching Pachinko animation of Pyramid Head screaming "HIT THE LEVER!!!"?) but hopefully this thread can draw back the discussion towards what made the series truly great. Which of the Silent Hill games did you personally find the most scary? Fear is a highly subjective thing so feel free to choose and elaborate on which aspects of your chosen game/s did it for you. Fear can run the gamut from sheer momentary terror, blind animal panic, numinous dread and even an intangible sense of the uncanny. I'd argue that at it's best the Silent Hill games masterfully wove these diverse threads of fear together into a unique whole that left its players both morbidly curious and paralyzed with uncertainty. Feel free to choose any of games from any system, from the PS1's first titular debut right through to the aforementioned P.T./Silent Hills which, although I sadly never got to play, looked absolutely heart-stopping. I'll provide a link to the franchises Wikipedia page for your convenience. For me it's an almost irreconcilable decision between Silent Hill 3 and Silent Hill 4: The Room. The former is certainly the better game for various gaming mechanics reasons as well as lacking a few of the latter games slightly annoying difficulty/survival elements, but I absolutely adore the conceptualization of the respective protagonists worlds in both titles. SH3's Heather had a fresh appeal and gave the series a locus distinct from the previous games, being a relatively positive younger female character which probably engendered a different set of sympathies in gamers than the two previous utterly miserable adult men. Given that it's a well-established trope that in the Silent Hill-verse the purgatorial/hellish otherworlds are shaped by the complex phobias and guilt haunted neuroses of the protagonists, SH3 was an interesting and diverse landscape for a character who seemed to (on the surface at least) a much more innocent and blameless figure. Despite this the monsters were by far some of the best ever devised. Take the above example, the so-called "Numb Bodies", one of the weakest enemies in SH3 but a fine example of what the Silent Hill team was capable of. The real strength of SH3's monster designs was the unnerving tension between abstraction and bodiliness. I rate them alongside Francis Bacon's most brutally uncanny paintings (see Painting (1946)), Damien Hirst's earlier (and in my opinion less commercially crass) vitrines, or John Isaac's jarringly formalist sculptures of hyper-realistic fleshiness. SH3's monsters possess that same uneasy balance between something that is profoundly "wrong" and anatomically impossible, with the wholly objective hair-streaked sweaty "thingliness" of an actual object hovering between inanimate and organic qualities. It's an effect that both enthralls and appalls me in equal measure, and one finds it in the best darkly inclined art of any given medium. Not that there weren't plenty of other equally compelling and accomplished elements of SH3's scariness, the perverse familiarity of the rust and blood caked interiors taken to an extreme conclusion, a uncompromisingly frightening soundtrack/ambience that often harassed and unnerved the player even in relatively safe areas of the game, the many genuinely disturbing non-lethal encounters and expertly utilized "jump scares", to cite a few. But I guess I'm just overwhelmingly biased towards great monster design due to being an irrepressible teratophile. Even some of more recognizably humanoid and animal-like enemies of SH3 are admirably conceived, in terms of their surface appearance, the godless sounds they emit and their repulsively tic-ridden movements. Thanks for reading my ramblings and thanks in advance for replying if you choose to do so. I'll post my thoughts on Silent Hill 4: The Room at a later date if this thread garners any interest. I've leave you with one more image of an SH3 enemy that I think exemplifies the truly stellar aesthetics of the game. The Glutton, which you encounter (if I remember correctly) in the office level that blocks your path to Heather's home. It's effectively a non-lethal obstacle in a logic puzzle and not per se an actual combative enemy, but it's the most advanced example of the anomalous "what on God's green earth am I looking at" motifs employed in Silent Hill's twisted oeuvre.