Sundown

Exactly. Although the settings affect the visuals, and I've always perferred the TMP era visuals and designs over the TNG stuff, and I wish they would do some more late Kirk-era stuff, with or without his Khaaaan-ness. But assuming the next Trek movie would stink just because the last one did is an odd premise. If we followed that, then Wrath of Khan, Voyage Home, Undiscovered Country, and First Contact would never have been made. Star Trek isn't dead. It's just been done badly for a good while by folks who don't share Roddenberry's vision. YES!! Or heck, an entire series! Please! Before his transformation into a prune is complete. -Al

Yep. "Anime" is a bastardization thrice removed. Although the issue here is mostly how it is and isn't used by Japanese and foreigners in regards to the Japanese cultural artform. -Al

Foreigners to Japan identifying this or that animated feature as being "anime" or "not anime" probably would just make most real Japanese folks confused, or at least cause some to roll their eyes for such a bastardization of their own term for Gaijin purposes. It 's a convenient label though, as far as english is concerned-- but I just find it ironic that it's used by some to identify what's pure and Japanese, imbuing it with special recognition over stuff tainted by Gaijin-- when the label used in this manner is itself the corruption of an originally Japanese term. -Al

It's... Khhaaaaaan!!! -Al

O_o It's... Gamlin. There's no escape from M7, not even in RT. -Al

That's more in line with strategies I heard, which boiled down to spend the first round dodging and make up for it later when he slows down enough that you have an opening to hit him. Okay, I must be smoking something then. Maybe I'm confusing my memories with the fact that if you let Tyson smoosh you around and knock you down a few times while trying to get hits in, things will get much harder. But if you stay mostly fresh, you have a much better chance down the line as he slows down. Or something. -Al

Actually beat Tyson eventually. He wasn't easy, but once you got his pattern down and could dodge fast enough, he was pretty beatable. If I remember right, the longer the fight dragged on, the more likely you were hosed. -Al

It's a curse. It really is. Wonder what a power-glove-like device could do with an FPS. Except tire your arm out I mean. What would also be neat would be a light-gun controller shaped like a sub machine gun, where the foregrip could be used for movement like a sort of joystick, and the gun is involved in actually aiming at and shooting things on the screen. Meh, again, dreaming. Not to mention that changing movement directions will sort of muck up your aim, as you jerk your foregrip around. Hrmm... for realism's sake, maybe that's exactly what you'd want it to do. -Al

I've seen the thing. Not constructed quite as robustly, or with the right movement resistances as I'd like for an FPS though. And I don't think it supports tilt, either. It was actually the controller that got me thinking about something like that for a shooter though. -Al

My idea of a perfect FPS controller? Right hand-- mouse. Left hand-- a puck like jostick with a myriad of buttons. The puck itself can be shifted in the four normal directions, in addition to being able to be twisted and tilted. Shifting for standard movement, WASD style. Tilting for mapping to things like leaning (left and right) or crouching (forward and backwards), and twisting for stuff like torso turning in the games that support the feature. Of course analog control all around. Analog movement. Analog leaning. Analog crouching. Analog torso twist. I can dream. -Al

Okay. Chick, bad. Slug, good. Got it. -Al

Fat people are jolly. Or horribly depressed. Either way they make lame villans. *cough* Jabba the Hutt *cough* I dunno, maybe they turn out less lame if they're a parapalegic slug. -Al

Agreed, for the most part. They might have polished it with a few ergonomic adjustments, and I'd have loved it if they made 6 buttons thumb-accessible in street-fighter style. Or if they'd made the analog triggers a little bit more like the Dreamcast's and Gamecube's, with their longer analog trigger pull... But the PS2's controller is still pretty comfortable and mighty fine. Beats the heck out of the Gamecube's confusing on-crack button layout, and how it cramps my large hands at times. I hate that thing. -Al

Well, yeah. But see, Snake thought it was. And Metal Gear is just evil incarnate by association anyway. Sitting in its seat for but a moment will entice you with mad power! Well, be thankful that we didn't actually get that wish-- in the form of destroying some "supercomputer" controlling Metal Gear, and avoiding anything to do with being shot at by a nuclear tipped walking tank of death altogether. *Twitches from NES Metal Gear flashbacks.* -Al

If this is true, then that means that the scene with the ships being pulled sideways isn't her doing. Now that I think about it, I remember being able to do just that in one of those sub/destroyer simulations I'd played. -Al

Well, Foxx might make the film vaguely watchable in parts. And Sam Shepard's in it. Annoys me that instead of using authentic modern flightsuits and gear, they're using specially designed tight and formfitting flight suits to emphasize Biel's assets. Meh. And the CG looks for the most part crummy, except for the carrier landing. That part actually looks pretty convincing. -Al

The movie definately looks to be interesting, even if it does belabor the a-bomb subject again. What intrigues me is how the movie connects a secret weapon that affects allied shipping to stopping an a-bomb. Or if it will even use that plot device in the movie. Thanks for the heads up. I'm being somewhat facetious and thus probably a little insensitive on the matter here in this thread. It's probably a subject you can't be too careful about. As much as it might seem like justice from certain perspectives, and as much as Japan's actions in one form or another lead to the fateful bombings, the U.S. didn't make the decision primarily based on Japanese atrocities in Asia. Much of the decision weighed on coercing Japan to surrender unconditionally, and avoiding a potentially greater loss of American as well as Japanese lives in a prolonged ground invasion. Not to mention that the Japanese military was encouraging their civilians to fight to the bitter end. The fact that 200,000 non-combatants were perishing in Asia per month probably played into the decision somewhat, but it likely wasn't the primary motivating factor. -Al

Heh. Sorry, I'm slow on the uptake. =P It'd be something else to actually be able to sit in the cockpit of a Metal Gear for a change. But Metal Gear stands for all that's evil and nuclear, so there's no chance of that. Last thing Kojima wants to do is to tempt the player with absolute power. Man, I'd be happy just playing as Snake through his half of MGS 2. Snake, dressed as a Navy Seal! And denied the chance to play as him in that getup... yaarggh. The humanity. Yeah, I know you can play as Pliskin in Substance, in a couple of the Snake Tales... but it's not quite the same thing. -Al

I know it's a "problem" per se, but the problem is hardly unique to Snake. It's a problem with any character with remote military training, who even has business being in a "tactical espionage action" game. So Kojima citing that as the reason to pull Snake specifically doesn't really fly. If we were to follow that logic, we'd need to pull out Raiden and Naked Snake as well, not to metion retroactively pulling out all of Snake's appearances before he was suddenly deemed too leet for us partway through MGS 2. We might as well not make games. Agreed. I found it odd that The Boss was lecturing Naked Snake on basics of camoflague and combat that even I knew. But Kojima loves in-game tutorials. I guess for him it creates the tension between handholding and educating your player and the effect of wearing at the character's believability. But I think players can suspend disbelief for a moment. Especially if they actually get to play as Snake. -Al

I stand corrected. And I realize the issues go deeper than they appear at the surface. I'd appreciate feedback on what indeed are problematic assumptions in this discussion, although this thread probably isn't the best place for it. To Japan's credit, even during the period of time close to the bombing, there didn't exist enormous vehement hatred or blame directed at the U.S. They accepted what occred as a consequence of war... similar to the sentiment that still exists in some form today. -Al

Well it's a convoluted and contrived storyline that details conspiracies of epic proportions and builds expectations of a cohesive finale-- then fails to deliver, copping out in a quaint moral message that totally ignores the most bizarre of concepts and characters-- most introduced in the last 5 minutes with unscrupulous name dropping, no less. It just wreaked of Kojima dreaming up a convoluted plot that got bigger than he could handle, by which time he just didn't know how to kill it. It's writing out of one's butt without having a well-planned ending, ie. the Chris Carter syndrome. Either that, or he ran out of time and resources before the game needed to be shipped. In either case, I have never gone from "Holy cow. This story rocks! I can't wait to see what this all means!" to "How cow. This kinda... sucks. Is he just making it up as he goes along?" in so short a time. -Al

It's too bad that shot from M7 shows its exceptions and not its norm. -Al EDIT: missing "not". =P

If I recall, Kojima was moving away from the beloved Solid Snake because it's hard to justify putting in-game tutorials in when the player character is an elite commando that knows more about combat than the poeple giving him instructions. So I doubt Snake will come back. That's hardly a problem, playing as Snake when the player himself is mostly clueless-- because we haven't been able to play as Snake since the beginning half of MGS 2. Besides, that hardly stretches believability anymore than how things have been-- seeing as every one of the characters you play in his games are uber-special-forces trained, and shouldn't have to be told most of the things players are told. Please, let us play the Real Snake already, and give us some sort of conclusion to the acid-trip-induced abortive ending of MGS 2. I'd also love to play as Meryl for a segment of the game, too. -Al

Hey, here's a idea on how to stop a planned third atomic bombing. Just totally off the top of my head. Surrender! Like they should have the first two times. Well the plot hook seems interesting. I love speculative history. But in a way, it seems like this is one of the few ways Japan can "win" in a WWII movie and a Japanese viewer might be satisfied-- to suggest that Japan's forces might somehow have prevented even greater suffering and tragedy by their heroic actions. But seriously... there's a way they could have done just that. I refer you the vaguely plausible solution above. It's not like the US was dropping A-bombs for their own good humor. And Japanese popular media seems to have forgotten that a decade long war starting in Manchuria wasn't all about two thermonuclear explosions. For what it's worth, I just ran into some sources on the net that cite that from declassifed WWII documents, Japan was working on and implementing their own A-bomb. No idea, if it's really true. I doubt they would have practiced any more restraint than the U.S. had. At any rate, to be completely fair, supposedly Japanese diplomats had been attempting surrender, though not unconditional, with the issue of contention being retaining the rule of the Emperor. There were Japanese military leaders determined to hold out and fight a decisive battle, however. But you gotta admit... even three days after Hiroshima, Japan's government hadn't come to a consensus of unconditional surrender. What part of thermouclear explosion do you not understand? -Al

Anyone catch that the new "Bugs" isn't actually even "Bugs" at all? Freaky Bugs is actually "Buzz Bunny". These are all new characters based on the old templates, sort of like what was done with Tiny Toons-- each character mirrored an original, but never replaced him. They might even interact with our favorites. Plus, it's set in the future, so there's some plot basis for the redesign. Doesn't preclude the series stinking or actually being any good though. -All