Selfsurprise

10/10, succinct way of telling others not to follow other peoples dreams when they could be following their own. "I don't want to make plop art — sculpture that just gets plopped down in places. I wouldn't want to litter every corner of the world with my sculpture." - Rachel Whiteread

Thanks for the link Vapymid :3 @ Blinky The Rabbit: I have to confess this isn't my usual kind of musical fare, but it does have a certain upbeat country/pseudo-psychobilly quality that can't be scoffed at. My older brother would absolutely love this stuff. I'll let him listen to it and I'll get back to you with his verdict.

"Oh Data! You crazy!" :3

Glad to see you guys get the idea Melted by Ty Segall ( )Solitary Man by Johnny Cash (link) Dog and his Master by Marcy Playground (link) Boys Keep Swinging by David Bowie (link) BULMA ブルマ by ｍ aｉ t ｒ o ( )Assimilate by Skinny Puppy ( )Bikini Kill by LED ER EST ( )Rifles by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club ( )Ancient Echoes by Eternal Tapestry ( )Smile Like Sword by Iron Fist Of The Sun ( )Sounds of a Holy Heart (Left Ventricle Mix) by DJ DarryL & DJ c3po (no link) Fairies Wear Boots by Black Sabbath (link)

Bleached Bones by Cold Comfort Hey there! Are you a fan of the genre Woah_G?

Sorry but it had to be black, being the inveterate fan of anything dismal and dread-inducing that I am...

This game is easy peasey to play. Below is a playlist of various songs I just so happen to like. I tried to select a rough equal mix of reasonably well known songs, as well as some more obscure ones. Just copy n' paste or quote the list, but replace one of the tracks with a track of your own. The next person copies/quotes your altered list, and so on. Feel free to make your choices based on your least favourite songs, or simply because you've not heard of it. Feel free to post music of any genre, both underground and mainstream, and if you like provide a link if applicable. I've used Youtube page links but anything like Bandcamp, Soundcloud, etc is okay too. To be honest I've mostly added a link for each song for my own convenience, just remember to replace the URLs when you pick your own track if you want to provide one. ~ Melted by Ty Segall ( )Solitary Man by Johnny Cash (link) Hatch The Plan by Andy Stott ( )Boys Keep Swinging by David Bowie (link) Over The Edge (Current Value Remix) by The Sect ( )Assimilate by Skinny Puppy ( )Bikini Kill by LEDE ER EST ( )Rifles by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club ( )Ancient Echoes by Eternal Tapestry ( )Smile Like Sword by Iron Fist Of The Sun ( )Metralleta by Generación Suicida ( )Fairies Wear Boots by Black Sabbath (link)

9/10, advice for life, keep the intentionally uneducated on their toes... :3 "It is obvious that the space of the factory is traditionally more or less invisible in public. Its visibility is policed, and surveillance produces a one-way gaze. Paradoxically, a museum is not so different. In a lucid 1972 interview Godard pointed out that, because filming is prohibited in factories, museums, and airports, effectively 80% of productive activity in France is rendered invisible: “The exploiter doesn’t show the exploitation to the exploited.” This still applies today, if for different reasons. Museums prohibit filming or charge exorbitant shooting fees. Just as the work performed in the factory cannot be shown outside it, most of the works on display in a museum cannot be shown outside its walls. A paradoxical situation arises: a museum predicated on producing and marketing visibility can itself not be shown—the labor performed there is just as publicly invisible as that of any sausage factory." - Hito Steyerl

"YOUR EYES CAN BE SO CRUEL..." [/new romantic ballad singing]

Carnivorous

Fantasy Interpersonal Relations Games: On first glance a FIRG title might look like any other dungeon crawling loot-hoarding RPG game set in a fantastical world of myriad abhuman creatures and fearsome beasts. However instead of waging war or doing the bidding of gods, you pretty much have to just live out your life as normal individual by making friends with monsters. Get a shitty job as a Gong Farmer in a Demodand frat house, all whilst trying to keep your Drider spouse from divorcing you. Surprisingly, FIRG games aren't actually some weird fetish fuel!

8/10, when one Bowie isn't enough, four will suffice.

All of my favourite people in the world are old men and women. I'm doomed to witness that thin sliver of light that constitutes my heroes lives between two immense pillars and blackness, be snuffed out within a decade or two. What will I ever do when Brian Blessed takes the everlasting knock? x'c

Would you be opposed to me sig-quoting this Seattleite? It struck me as something Freeman himself would say... :3

Well done! I don't suppose you have a bandcamp page or something similar? I'd love to take a listen.

Finger by Ty Segall

Sounds like humanity isn't the dominant force in their own backyard, even though they might be convinced they still are. I did read that bit in your enemy list about the Black-Eyes, which is some pretty nightmare fueling stuff.

For me personally, it has to be the third and fourth installments of the Broken Sword series. I love the first and second BS games. Yes, by today's standards the original games aren't exactly pixelated masterpieces (although the location illustrations are gorgeous) and both contain a handful of potentially game breaking bugs that will have you stuck in game save purgatory with no solution other than to start again - it's not a problem! The characters are amusing and often likeable enough (even when they aren't supposed to be) to make you want to talk to them, and they usually have a lot to say and the script-writing and dialogue is both well written and well voiced. Plus who doesn't like plots involving The Knights Templar, Aztec god summoning mirrors, a chisel-jawed investigative protaganist and his French girlfriend, and an easter egg involving a talking goat who hates marzipan? :3 Three and four had all of the things that made the first two games great, the awesome plots drawing from mythological folklore and conspiratorial secrets, the crazy and talkative national stereotypes, the barmy ambitious villains, and of course the playful tête-à-tête of George and Nico. How could they possibly spoil such a box-ticking brain-teasing formula for point n' click success? They turned them into 3D games. You're probably thinking "I hate to tell you this Selfsurprise me ol' mucker, but games with three-dimensional graphics have sort of become the norm on planet Earth". Believe it or not I'm well aware of this fact, yet Broken Sword 3 and 4 seemed to have purposefully engineered with the most awkward, least intuitive and downright unplayable 3D engines I've come across in a game. Both games have a habit of shifting haphazardly between wonky survival horror angles with all the attendant directional button horror you would expect, including some chase/trap scenes that require split second input, all whilst the camera does all it can to halt your character in their tracks. Also it seems someone decided that neither of the previous Broken Sword titles were TOMB RAIDER CROFT enough, featuring some of the most unwelcome block pushing, pseudo-platforming, "walk around and stand here because reasons" puzzle sections you might ever come across. They tried to retain some of cartoonish charm of the previous games, but the glitchy graphics and facial animations make the characters look like malfunctioning Westworld humanoids out-of-step with their surroundings and even their own dialogue. It's ugly. I knuckled under and completed both games purely because I love the series and I actually care about the setting and the characters, but man did they make it a chore! I might be able to forgive Revolution Software for going off on a new tangent if this had been released in the late 90's PS1 era, and in all honesty I would less better examples of 3D gaming to compare it to. But the third game came out in 2003! How on God's green planet did they mess it up this badly?! I think both games are an abject moral lesson in the dangers of trying to change a games paradigm when it isn't called for. In Revolution Game's defence both titles were released roughly within the timeframe of the point n' click dark ages, when the gaming industry and in-bed media seemed to be doing their utmost to ignore and forget that the genre even existed. Thank goodness the fifth game was a welcome return to the games older format, only with much nicer cel-shaded 3D characters and the illustrated evocative locations. And the sixth game promises to be similarly true to the tried and tested recipe.

From a marketing standpoint bumming up the games online features makes sense, I'm aware I'm in the anti-"playing with strangers" minority. I should probably make more of an effort to see if certain online only games are worth playing. For example, I really enjoyed Skyrim and felt quite excited by the prospect of the following Elder Scrolls Online title. But after finding out it was exclusively for online gaming I lost interest. Are any aspects of game worthwhile for a single player? It's sad to see the utilization of game penalties for dodgy gamer practices, but the fact it exists highlights the fact that certain peoples conduct warrants it.

That's really disappointing. I think Fallout 3 and FNV owed a great deal of its continuing popularity to the modding community supporting it. You would think Bethesda would want to make things easier for that fanbase. They are going to release it, it just hasn't happened yet because they're trying to make it stable for more than just themselves. Even though the GECK isn't out yet, there are thousands of mods for the game, some are very extensive, some are the extensive NSFW mods from previous Bethesda games. Ooh! :3 But in seriousness, thanks for allaying my fears BTG. For a moment I thought Bethesda were planning a dick move.

+10000 I'm glad someone appreciated this anecdote. I tried explaining it to people I know in real life, but they ran away. :3

That's really disappointing. I think Fallout 3 and FNV owed a great deal of its continuing popularity to the modding community supporting it. You would think Bethesda would want to make things easier for that fanbase.

Australia has some amazing electroclash bands (The Presets, Midnight Juggernauts, Cut Copy, spring to mind) as well as some of the more unique metal bands I've ever come across (The Berzerker, Destruktor, Striborg, to name but a few) plus it had a tonne of successful exports in the 80's like Kylie Minogue, Nick Cave, INXS, etc. I've been doing some half-baked research on the subject of Australian music and it turns out the country had a burgeoning "bush band" folk music drawing influence from the nations early convict population, which in turn drew from an old European musical heritage. Notably the poet, author and musician Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson wrote the song "Waltzing Matilda" (although it may be a modification of an older pre-existent folk song, with new lyrics) that has sometimes been described as Australia's unofficial national anthem. Plus the country had a brief but encompassing infatuation with rock n' roll in the 50's with artists like Johnny O'Keefe and bands such as Colin Joye and the Joy Boys, before somewhat declining popularity with the rise of the English genre Merseybeat. I often think that music wouldn't necessarily be stuck in a rut just because humanity finds itself in a technological dark age. If the game is set two hundred yeas after 2077 then I see no good reason why musicians would necessarily be stuck doing the same thing over and over again. Hardship and survival aside, human beings have been improvising and developing new mediums and genres even amidst the most troubling circumstances. That being said there is something in the nature of humanity that wants to revive things once considered lost. If budding post-apocalyptic bards came across old records I suppose they would invariably drawn influence from it, it may even sound entirely novel and new to their ears. yex-HJ1pkG8 ^ One example of Oz's contribution to overall musical awesomeness... Loads of potential here. All of local tribal land disputes, diverse religious demographics and lifestyles, environmental hazards and animals that were pretty lethal even before the advent of nuclear horror and unethical genetics. I'd recommend Fallout: Madagascar for innumerable mutant lemurs and oversized reptiles. I think it's kinda implied that there has been some huge climate shifts due the war (thus why most of America is largely desert, and why plant life is so dead on the East coast), so it's hard to know what Antartica is like. For all we know, if could be a fairly livable region, especially since it probably didn't get hit by any bombs. I wonder if all the science stations managed to make a nice life for themselves... If it's still a frozen snowball of a landmass, like BTG said, there isn't a huge plethora of animals or indigenous cultures in the South Pole. Then again the insatiable Lovecraftian in me wants some sort of At The Mountains Of Madness scenario to take place. If that happens your aforementioned scientists probably aren't having such a great time of it, lush tropical Antarctic paradise or not! ^ If this guy isn't a companion in-game then we might as well not bother.

I think I know how you feel. The presumed lack of civility makes me just not want to play online games at all. I don't mind the structured competitive conflict that certain games call for, especially if there is a sound narrative reason for doing so. But who wants to play a game that you can't help feeling is going to be full of trolls and the deliberately unemployed?

If you don't mind my asking, what kind of tone are going for in terms of the mods atmosphere and mood? The magically corrupt aspects of the setting point to something quite bleak and sober despite the fantastical elements, but reading some of your battle dialogue ideas regarding the physical instability of Vampires ("Oh, not this again!" x3 I like this) you seem to aiming for at least a mild dose of comic brevity.