I was also disappointed; Crank 2 earned a solid A.

Yeah I thought about that too, but then, when is Glados a reliable source of information?

Serious poster, that's a good point. Modern acting isn't any closer to how people actually act today than old-school acting was. It's just that it saturates all of entertainment, and therefore seems like the norm.

Cooper, I have to admit that your joke went right over my head the first time I read it. I now assume that what you meant was: "Cartoonists have boring sex lives, therefore this will be a boring book."

The end of Glados's character arc is, I think, pretty underappreciated. The reason I think that is because if they had messed it up, and had her break character, you would hear no end of it. Instead, the resolution we get allows Glados a little more humanity, but doesn't betray her characterization as a clinical,…

Nah, ep 2 is pretty widely regarded as the best of the HL2 series. You're certainly not alone.

I've had some real problems with Steam lately. Basically, I trust VALVE to make games that work with their own platform, but I have some horror stories about 3rd-party releases that ensure the only Steam games I'll purchase are in-house ones.

I'd say you have a point, but most bestselling FPSes are, for all intents and purposes, "about being trapped in a research facility." Invisible walls keep supposedly sprawling environments pretty neatly contained. Here's an example: Try and do a little exploring in Black Ops, and discover that trees + visible horizon…

Hey man, there's a SPOILERS wheat field at the end. Wheat fields need human maintenance. They don't just sprout up after 200 years of post-Combine extinction.

I thought Merchant was fine. Simmons was a show-stealer, but his lines were a little to goofy to be really great. In the first one, Glados said things that actually sounded like legally sanitized, cold, politically correct corporate-speak, but with terrifying little twists. Cave Johnson sometimes suffers from a lack…

Poke around the 1970s Aperture offices, and you'll find an abandoned dry dock with a couple of life preservers stamped with the name "Borealis."

I've been hearing a lot of people complain that it's too short, which strikes me as a largely bullshit complaint. I mean that you're not buying salami by the gram here, you're buying a very carefully laid-out experience. Valve could easily have stuffed in some more puzzles to pad for length - that the previews showed…

Well, the first one was a good vs. evil story, with Glados being pretty unequivocally evil. This one's more about good vs. stupid. The whole idea that placing a total incompetent in charge is as hazardous as a conniving presence out to get you. Which sorta makes Wheatley all the more heartbreaking; he's essentially…

Fun, clever game.
So… Valve is basically the Pixar of video games, yeah? I know I'm not the first to make the comparison, but it seems pretty apt to me.

@sir wheat: Uh yeah grandpa, people holding opinions that you disagree with is just "some kinda weird meme" that you missed.

If I remember correctly, I think Eggers shows a lot of reverence for Wallace in that introduction. I don't think HE considers himself a peer to Wallace.

Right, because making documentaries about shitty situations is just profiteering off of human misery. Because there's so much money in that, and it's such a comfortable way to make a living.

I really really liked that movie in the theatre. Watched it again on DVD and it was awful.

"Film school my be flawed, but I'm pretty sure not a single person has ever successfully transitioned from "making movies with friends" to 'successfully working in the film industry.'"

Meh
Wasn't the whole point of Homer working in a nuclear power plant to play on people's fear of nuclear meltdown in the first place? I mean the Simpsons premiered not long after the Chernobyl disaster, and here's a show with an incompetent buffoon working in a severely dilapidated, mismanaged NPP. I think the…