Well, that's kind of the point of Watchmen, Alan Moore was hoping to spark a change in comic books (away from "Love in the Wards" and toward other subject matter... like pirates!) with it... and the change he got was superheroes with psychological problems. He blames comics today on his bad mood all those years ago...
Comic books end up being pretty suitable for movies because they act as a premade story board. I quite liked A History of Violence, myself.
Survival Horror, to my mind, was a combination of two types of games. The most obvious is horror. Zombies and other scary creatures wandering about. However, the presence of horror enemies does not necessarily make something survival horror.
Take Painkiller. Painkiller is an old school First Person Shooter. You see something, and you shoot it. However, it was creative in the nature of it's scary looking and scary moving enemies. Since each level was different, not all stand out as horror, but the Asylum creeped me out enough.
The thing about Painkiller though is that you are, yourself a scary, unstoppable killing machine. The game makes it easy to start up again where you died, you get tons of power ups and ammo, and your main weapon is an unlimited ammo flying cuisinart. This is actually not uncommon for games, or for horror themed games.
Now, people are used to the original Resident Evil as survival horror, and it is, but there are more also more recent games that emphasize the other part of survival horror, survival.
Take Haunting Ground. In Haunting Ground your character is essentially a completely helpless teenage girl with no really effective way of fighting the horror. The big game mechanic? Well, when a big, horrifying guy comes along, hide under some furniture and wait for him to give up in frustration and leave. You don't have an effective way to fight back.
Now, the newer Resident Evils seem to have abandoned this to an extent. I haven't played 5, in 4 it is possible to run out of ammo. However... you do a lot more shooting than running in my opinion. At least I do... my approach to the original Resident Evil was to avoid using weapons as much as possible. Run past the zombies, try to avoid going dangerouse places... when dogs enter a room get to the door as quick as possible and don't go back unless you have too. For me a successful, "room run" meant I ran through the room without getting bit and without using up precious ammo. Shooting at something and missing, on the other hand was (for the game) annoying or even depressing, especially with rarer ammo for stronger weapons.
The original Resident Evil was meant to evoke the feeling of the original Dawn of the Dead. Part of the fun of that movie was thinking about post apocalyptic survival. It wasn't just about scary zombies, it was about finding supplies and safe places to stay.
Left4Dead is kind of a mix, I think it tries to evoke survival horror by requiring you to rely on your team, limits on some kinds of ammo and health, and the fact that attacking witches really isn't a good idea.
Someone should make a patch for it that isn't unofficial, and patch the Steam version. People aren't going to buy it when it says, "* Does not support Windows XP 64" and since it does with the amateur patch above they are losing sales.
I mean, I've seen it sold as a promotion before (on Halloween weekend, I think), but it has always had this trivial GlobalMemoryStatus() bug that causes it to crash in 64 bit. (By the way, I'm not underestimating Iain here, he did solid work finding the bug... but now that we know what it is we know how easy it is to fix!)
Heck, kick some money Iain's way for it and use his patch, Valve, it works!
It is sometimes erroneously thought that author Harlan Ellison took James Cameron to court for plagiarism with regard to the film The Terminator over this episode. According to E! Online, Terminator production company Hemdale and distributor Orion Pictures "gave veteran fantasy writer Harlan Ellison an 'acknowledgement to the works of' credit on The Terminator and a cash settlement lest he sue for plagiarism of two episodes he wrote for The Outer Limits in the 1960s and a Hugo Award winning sci-fi story (1977)".[1] The additional Outer Limits episode is "Demon With A Glass Hand."
-- Soldier (The Outer Limits)
It seems like it's unfair to accuse someone of suing when there is a "preventative settlement," even if he has a bit of a bad reputation. As to the relevence of the Outer Limits episodes to the Terminator movies?
Hmm, well, you should really judge for yourself (Shhh! Don't tell Harlan):
Personally, I think Demon with a Glass Hand is more like Terminator 2. I also remember a sad and futile hunt for it on DVD... if James Cameron or any DVD producers are listening those would go great on an extended edition Terminator box set... hint, hint...
The same thing happened to me at Radio Shack. Of course, I think I probably just wasn't selling enough stuff. (I refused to buy things myself or have family come in and by things to pad my numbers. I was just supposed to be a spending money job for while I was in college full time, anyway.) This was years ago. What they did was zeroed out my hours.
I still had to go to the meetings with the greasy guy explaining the great value of extended service plans, though. "When the customer comes back with an extended service plan, you tell him... he'll be like a king. Now, you might have a hard time selling a service plan that costs more than the item itself [some cheap headphones], but you replace the item 3 times on the service plan, you tell him, and you've more than made the money back." Of course I quit... stopped shopping at Radio Shack, too.
Sell it as a fine, collect it as a tax. Then hope it doesn't really operate as a fine, or you are screwed. (You being a faceless, money grubbing government bureacrat.)
Now the guy's got Paulie as a partner. Any problems, he goes to Paulie. Trouble with the bill? He can go to Paulie. Trouble with the cops, deliveries, Tommy, he can call Paulie. But now the guy's gotta come up with Paulie's money every week no matter what. Business bad? Fuck you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? Fuck you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning huh? Fuck you, pay me."
--- Henry Hill, Goodfellas
Yes, when I saw it I thought there would be an article about the Dharma Initiative.
Seriously, though. I blame commercials. Speaking of Lost or even a comedy like the Office, I notice that over time a lot more shows have become serials. I don't mean, they have recurring plot elements, either, I mean actual serials with continuing plots and cliffhanger endings.
My opinion? It's the increasing number of commercials. In order to tell a single coherent story you need to use multiple episodes, otherwise you can't have a story that's at all interesting or satisfying.
(Buying older series on DVD versus newer series illustrates this... the older the show, the longer the episodes!)
I have relatives that are or were UAW auto workers and it is unbelievable how slack their jobs are or what nonsense the hard core slackers can get away with.
I totally believe you. On the same subject, my relatives are among the ten richest kings of Europe, and you'd be surprised at what slackers they are!
Actually, I'm saying if he hadn't started a trend of financializing the economy and eliminating the manufacturing base, America still might be an economic power today. (As opposed to a debtor nation.)
See, your problem is that you think loansharking and making things provide equal value to the economy at large, and I don't. However, it's not my job to give you a lesson in economics. Besides, you'll find many, many mainstream economists to agree with you (the same guys who lead the country over a cliff).
Depressions don't happen by magic, they are caused by poor economic decision making by the economic leadership of the country. Jack Welch was one of those leaders, and not just a leader but a trend setter. So, yes, he doesn't get a pass that the house of cards he built waited until after he left to collapse.
(Also, Jack's quote said nothing about Chinese. He said he couldn't compete with Japanese TVs. Sure, those may have been made in China, and you may be right. In which case he could have outsourced TV manufacturing to China himself. My opinion is that that would still be bad, but it doesn't alter the fact that he decided to fundamentally change GE from an industrial company to a glorified loansharking outfit.)
Slashdot Mirror
Action Comics #1: Page 12
Well, that's kind of the point of Watchmen, Alan Moore was hoping to spark a change in comic books (away from "Love in the Wards" and toward other subject matter... like pirates!) with it... and the change he got was superheroes with psychological problems. He blames comics today on his bad mood all those years ago...
Comic books end up being pretty suitable for movies because they act as a premade story board. I quite liked A History of Violence, myself.
Survival Horror, to my mind, was a combination of two types of games. The most obvious is horror. Zombies and other scary creatures wandering about. However, the presence of horror enemies does not necessarily make something survival horror.
Take Painkiller. Painkiller is an old school First Person Shooter. You see something, and you shoot it. However, it was creative in the nature of it's scary looking and scary moving enemies. Since each level was different, not all stand out as horror, but the Asylum creeped me out enough.
The thing about Painkiller though is that you are, yourself a scary, unstoppable killing machine. The game makes it easy to start up again where you died, you get tons of power ups and ammo, and your main weapon is an unlimited ammo flying cuisinart. This is actually not uncommon for games, or for horror themed games.
Now, people are used to the original Resident Evil as survival horror, and it is, but there are more also more recent games that emphasize the other part of survival horror, survival.
Take Haunting Ground. In Haunting Ground your character is essentially a completely helpless teenage girl with no really effective way of fighting the horror. The big game mechanic? Well, when a big, horrifying guy comes along, hide under some furniture and wait for him to give up in frustration and leave. You don't have an effective way to fight back.
Now, the newer Resident Evils seem to have abandoned this to an extent. I haven't played 5, in 4 it is possible to run out of ammo. However... you do a lot more shooting than running in my opinion. At least I do... my approach to the original Resident Evil was to avoid using weapons as much as possible. Run past the zombies, try to avoid going dangerouse places... when dogs enter a room get to the door as quick as possible and don't go back unless you have too. For me a successful, "room run" meant I ran through the room without getting bit and without using up precious ammo. Shooting at something and missing, on the other hand was (for the game) annoying or even depressing, especially with rarer ammo for stronger weapons.
The original Resident Evil was meant to evoke the feeling of the original Dawn of the Dead. Part of the fun of that movie was thinking about post apocalyptic survival. It wasn't just about scary zombies, it was about finding supplies and safe places to stay.
Left4Dead is kind of a mix, I think it tries to evoke survival horror by requiring you to rely on your team, limits on some kinds of ammo and health, and the fact that attacking witches really isn't a good idea.
This is actually a pretty good, simple way to describe a deflationary cycle.
How Could They Do Such A Thing
This just makes me think of that episode of Superman: The Animated series, Knight Time where Bruce Wayne was... um... I won't spoil it.
The fix for Vampire is trivially easy: Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines
Someone should make a patch for it that isn't unofficial, and patch the Steam version. People aren't going to buy it when it says, "* Does not support Windows XP 64" and since it does with the amateur patch above they are losing sales.
I mean, I've seen it sold as a promotion before (on Halloween weekend, I think), but it has always had this trivial GlobalMemoryStatus() bug that causes it to crash in 64 bit. (By the way, I'm not underestimating Iain here, he did solid work finding the bug... but now that we know what it is we know how easy it is to fix!)
Heck, kick some money Iain's way for it and use his patch, Valve, it works!
It seems like it's unfair to accuse someone of suing when there is a "preventative settlement," even if he has a bit of a bad reputation. As to the relevence of the Outer Limits episodes to the Terminator movies?
Hmm, well, you should really judge for yourself (Shhh! Don't tell Harlan):
Soldier
Demon With A Glass Hand
Personally, I think Demon with a Glass Hand is more like Terminator 2. I also remember a sad and futile hunt for it on DVD... if James Cameron or any DVD producers are listening those would go great on an extended edition Terminator box set... hint, hint...
That's important, but in my case it was the first job I got after the Dotcom crash that became my defining job, not my first real IT job.
That one is easy, they produce indentured servants, they make them out of free men and women.
Don't date robots!
The same thing happened to me at Radio Shack. Of course, I think I probably just wasn't selling enough stuff. (I refused to buy things myself or have family come in and by things to pad my numbers. I was just supposed to be a spending money job for while I was in college full time, anyway.) This was years ago. What they did was zeroed out my hours.
I still had to go to the meetings with the greasy guy explaining the great value of extended service plans, though. "When the customer comes back with an extended service plan, you tell him... he'll be like a king. Now, you might have a hard time selling a service plan that costs more than the item itself [some cheap headphones], but you replace the item 3 times on the service plan, you tell him, and you've more than made the money back." Of course I quit... stopped shopping at Radio Shack, too.
Sell it as a fine, collect it as a tax. Then hope it doesn't really operate as a fine, or you are screwed. (You being a faceless, money grubbing government bureacrat.)
Chimps are Terrifying.
Hmm... if he's doing that then how come Charisma Carpenter isn't the main actress on Dollhouse...
Personally, my favorite shows are Reaper and Chuck...
"Dolls Unite" campaign proposed to build buzz about the show before it airs, in an effort to prevent cancellation WAY in advance.
Seriously, though. I blame commercials. Speaking of Lost or even a comedy like the Office, I notice that over time a lot more shows have become serials. I don't mean, they have recurring plot elements, either, I mean actual serials with continuing plots and cliffhanger endings.
My opinion? It's the increasing number of commercials. In order to tell a single coherent story you need to use multiple episodes, otherwise you can't have a story that's at all interesting or satisfying.
(Buying older series on DVD versus newer series illustrates this... the older the show, the longer the episodes!)
Actually, Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs has been doing this kind of stuff for years. Check out Picnic in Arkham and the The Neil Gaiman Collection among others....
I don't know about you, but I've always wanted to smell like Herbert West! (or a Shoggoth!)
I totally believe you. On the same subject, my relatives are among the ten richest kings of Europe, and you'd be surprised at what slackers they are!
with blackjack... and hookers....
Actually, I'm saying if he hadn't started a trend of financializing the economy and eliminating the manufacturing base, America still might be an economic power today. (As opposed to a debtor nation.)
See, your problem is that you think loansharking and making things provide equal value to the economy at large, and I don't. However, it's not my job to give you a lesson in economics. Besides, you'll find many, many mainstream economists to agree with you (the same guys who lead the country over a cliff).
Depressions don't happen by magic, they are caused by poor economic decision making by the economic leadership of the country. Jack Welch was one of those leaders, and not just a leader but a trend setter. So, yes, he doesn't get a pass that the house of cards he built waited until after he left to collapse.
(Also, Jack's quote said nothing about Chinese. He said he couldn't compete with Japanese TVs. Sure, those may have been made in China, and you may be right. In which case he could have outsourced TV manufacturing to China himself. My opinion is that that would still be bad, but it doesn't alter the fact that he decided to fundamentally change GE from an industrial company to a glorified loansharking outfit.)
Microsoft? They've already Embraced and Extended America, so now they are on that third thing... Elevate (yeah, that's the ticket).
Failure because since he couldn't figure out how to make TVs competitively, he dropped out of the business. Check G. E.'s stock today.
Yes, he was a success though, he got lots of money.