David Fincher was due to direct a Rama film for ages. Shame it never happened - I think he'd bat it out of the park.

Ah, never mind. It turns out that Tim Powers and China Mieville's Bas Lag books are classified as steampunk. Turns out I liked it all along.

Steampunk
I've always thought of it as a wisp of a sub-genre, more of a style or a background than a proper fiction category.
I've read a couple of Blaylock books which didn't do much for me, and Girl Genius (which I love.) Any good books to recommend from the genre?
This particular book sounds a bit too slight -…

I liked this better when this was called The Dig
Seriously. And that game was plenty cinematic - for the standards of the time, at least.

Expat, they still do that. I don't remember how long ago they introduced a feature where you can have several different lists, so if you have multiple discs available you can assign one of the disk to any given list of titles, which makes management pretty easy and fairly reliable.
I've never used netflix - they send…

Lovefilm's pretty good, and while it does have a sizeable net presence, it emphasizes its mail-DVD/blueray service.
Which I guess suits netflix just fine, if they were to come over.

@Misantrope:
Heart of Darkness - that game was pure, fucking, unadulterated evil.
And you got a dragon's quest-stile vignette of your character (a little kid) biting it every time you died. Some of those were hilariously gruesome.

Wow, that really sucks. Poor guy.
I love Meadow; Such a great record. As for it being front loaded… really? Window, Numbered and Spell are on the second half, and they're all incredible songs. Seriously, the only problem I have with it are the track names.

So very stoked for this. It's confirmed for UK release as well, probably in a couple of months (it's region locked, and it looked like we wouldn't get it for a while - so yay!)

There really is a huge disconnect between the expectations that everyone had from the game (as encouraged by previews and videos.) The timed elements (an endless cycle of timed tsunamis, for example, or a volcano slowly spewing lava towards one of your towns) give forward momentum, but kill experimentation. Only…

And Ryan Gosling's abs.

It's pretty great! The basic gameplay reminds me of dime a dozen japanese action RPGs, but they throw so many flourishes and oddments in there that it really comes into its own. Everything else is perfectly pitched.

The Japanese really did abscond with the genre, it seems. Not that it matters much, at least when they get translated. The Etrian Odyssey games are superb.

Didn't spend nearly as much as I'd feared: Warhammer 40k retribution, and re-bought NWN2 with all the expansions (so much more convenient on steam.) Other than that, I had most of the stuff that interested me.
Got really angry at some of the reductions, especially Two Worlds II, which I bought a couple of months ago…

@Majestyk - that was great. Cheers!

You do know people from England post on these forums, right?

Wow. That's a seriously shitty, bone-headed move. I really hope they back down.

From what I hear, Molyneux is only getting worse. It's a shame.

Contact is lovely. As Ghalleon says, it feels a bit unfocused, but it's a lot of fun.

The way it works is that the host's level determines the level of everyone else in his game. Say you jump into a game I'm hosting, then you'll play as one of the three characters I didn't choose, and you'll be the same level I am. If I didn't select abilities for that character, or if no one ever played as him, then…