Posts by Thrik

  • Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

    Quote from knj

    what ? i was sure that they sold MW3 realy good ?

    HP if you want to be let down by FPS'a a lil more try Syndicate

    AFAIK it had an OK launch, but its overall sales have been slower. Not saying it's been a bad run by any means, just that what went up and has started to come down again starting with MW3.

  • Spellbinder's photo thread.

    Nice man, captures the area nicely and makes me want to visit.

    The saturation/colour in your newer photos seems a bit intense, not sure if you did this intentionally or if it's a side-effect of adjusting the levels but the reds/greens look extremely overpowered on my screen. It actually looks quite cool in the flower photos, but the wider city ones are a bit hard to look at because of it and come across as unnatural (not in a good way).

    If you're using Photoshop try using a black/white gradient map, it's like desaturate but with more control and nicer results. Click your photo layer and go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map, then once the layer is created make sure you have the black/white gradient selected and change the layer opacity until it looks right. I did this really quickly with one of yours so you can see the difference:

    [Blocked Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/37346336/spellbinder-photo.jpg]

  • Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

    I'm no CoD hater and still consider the first two Modern Warfare among the best games of this generation, but this just doesn't appeal to me at all and is so far detached from the gritty and believable tone the earlier games had (particularly pre-MW) it looks like a different IP altogether.

    My main issues are that the subject matter in the trailer looks extremely derivative, like an art director went through Metal Gear Solid, Deus Ex, Crysis, and various other sci-fi classics and mashed them all together — and then a writer went and threw a generic 'machines were our downfall' type storyline into the mix. And as mentioned above the graphics are looking really rough, something made worse by the fact that the stuff in the trailer evokes memories of other games which accomplished the same kind of visual feats much more impressively.

    I don't think I'll even bother to buy this one. I'm still going to pick up MW3 and Blops 1 as they seemed more like what I'd enjoy, but this... it just feels like the CoD series jumping the shark in a desperate attempt to remain relevant after MW3's downward turn of sales.

  • The Avengers

    Saw it last night. Thought it was absolutely splendid! I'll happily admit I was very apprehensive about it as the trailer didn't seem very special and I'm kind of conditioned to expect these crossover type films to be a bit shit. But in fact it was a fantastic film, excelling in pretty much every way — I thought the airship and sequences involving it were particularly awesome.

    Honestly, just an all-round sublime film. I really can't imagine many people watching it and not getting a kick out of at least some of it, although I think it's going to be significantly better if you've seen the various characters' own films and understand where they're coming from. I really enjoyed seeing

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    Loki

    again as having a literal

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    god

    as your villain is always going to be sweet, and the bit where

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    Hulk smashed him around like a ragdoll

    was hilarious.

    Great success. Looks like the critics are loving it too with the Rotten Tomatoes score at 95%.

  • Crysis 3

    Can't deny I love the look of the screens, especially with the apparent passage of time. Actually makes me think of Enslaved more than The Last of Us, which was also set in an overgrown-by-nature New York ravaged by robots:

    [Blocked Image: http://ibeatitfirst.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/enslaved.jpg]

    But I'm sure Crysis 3 will be a much more fun game as I can't say Enslaved succeeded very much on that front. There's a lot of potential for excellent gameplay with a mix of jungle and urban environments, so I hope Crytek takes full advantage. It's also pretty awesome that the story has moved on so dramatically between the three games, very few series give you a full view of before, during, and after such world-changing shit.