phollox

I totally overlooked that H.R. Giger reference. I recently saw Jodorowsky's Dune. Pretty good documentary. And it talks about how Giger started working in films thanks to the pre-production stage of Dune. And when the film was cancelled, most artist took their Dune's work and used somewhere else. The resemblance of Giger concept art with the one later used in Alien and Prometeus is quite cool. It really puts Jodorowsky's Dune as the most influential film never made. Also, the documentary shows snippets of some other Jodorowsky sick movies, which now I want to see. The Holy Mountain for example

I wonder, from a Technical point of view, Doing Freeman's Mind in HL2 would be harder or easier for Ross? Does he still need to dump the frame footage in raw format, using his SSD, or Source Filmaker could help?

Loved the sound at the end. And nailed with the comment: "THIS ISN'T MASSACHUSETTS" As mentioned in other comments, I kinda of were expecting Freeman's reaction to Nihilant's voice. It seemed short to me. I always do a lot of exploring on that area. I guess because I'm not scared, but in awe. I also remember some weird scorpion-looking trees at the beginning of Xen, but those were in Blue Shift Thanks

Ross, I know that you probably have plenty of games to cover, but are you willing to accept donations to purchase new games? Or maybe gifts? Some deals in Steam offer licenses pack to offer as gift to friend. I'd love to play CS with the real voice of the original fake Freeman. It's either that or give me your mailing address so I can sent you cookies or some other gift. I'm not a stalker. I promise

Yeah it was weird, the other guy on the podcast was sort of talking like horror began in the 80s, they didn't really discuss the earlier horror, I was just going with the direction he wanted to take the podcast. For me personally, I feel like horror didn't start to get actually scary by modern standards until the late 50s or early 60s. Psycho was definitely a landmark film in that regard. Agreed. Horror before that time is now considered campy, being Ed Wood one of the main examples. I still have to see F.W. Murnaus's Nosferatu. And regarding Dracula, I remember being genuinely scared with the intro of Coppola's adaptation of Dracula, when Gary Oldman thow his sword into the cross and it starts to bleed. Probably due to the visual style of the preceding sequence, with rotoscoped silhouettes, and the mix of religious and heretic elements, plus the historical factor that Vlad actually existed and he wasn't a very nice guy. In high school I liked reading Edgar Allan Poe's stories. In my "To Watch" list, there's a huge spot called Roger Corman-Vincent Price-Poe. I read that those films were historical significant, mostly because they were produced outside large studios. Not sure about their quality, production values or scare capability. But I rather watch them over Sharknado. Have you seen any of those?

I found weird than 3 people talking about horror movies and its evolutions, left outside Ed Wood. Those aren't scary, but they were made with that intention.

Black Mesa is still there! Well, was. My bad. I wasn't clear in my statement. I meant, Black Mesa and Aperture science were competitors, as seen in Portal 1. The Half Life story line includes the Combine invasion, the Earth becomes enslaved, etc, etc. Under that story, what happened to Aperture Science? Chell kills GLADOS, didn't escape the lab, she's put in suspended animation, and long time afterwards, she's awoken to Portal 2. So, there's no Aperture Science during the Combine Invasion? Is Chell awoken after the Invasion? I found some answers here

Hmm, the whole point of the teleporters not conserving momentum is interesting, as it brings up one of the research lines of Black Mesa main competitor, Aperture Science. Those guys did it right. In the Half Life Universe, where Aperture Science coexist with Black Mesa, as seen in Portal 1, what happened after the Combine invasion? Aperture Science still exist. We got Portal 2. Damn, I would love to see Freeman with a Portal Gun. And I bet Freeman would love to see Chell, although I heard he prefers blondes with a European accent instead of mute asians.... Maybe the teleporters doesn't conserve momentum because Freeman is a man and he has balls. Conserving the cellular movement of the sperm within the balls would require some precise calculations. A roundup error could cause that sperm is shoot at high spend within the balls, piercing the scrotum with millions of tiny holes and staining with blood and semen the HEV . Hence, velocity vector times zero if the subject is male. The same argument could be used to individual blood cells, but it's neither funny nor sex discriminant.

Ross, I know that you are not supposed to comment in extenso on the Machinima issue, but I wonder what happen with the videos on Blip.tv? At some point you were saying that the reproductions there helped you more than the ones on Youtube, in terms of money. After watching your videos there, I discovered a few web series that caught my attention. But now, you only post the Youtube links, and I no longer need to go to Blip.tv.

What about this as continuation of that intro: "...Although, some newer buildings on MIT looks really weird. Maybe they are just renovating. Besides, walking around the Stata Center stoned for the first is far more weird that this. Wait. The gravity here is fucked up? OK, now definitely this is not MIT either. OMG, the sky is purple. I'm in LA. Those stupid scientists sent me to Cal Tech. Pollution and beautiful sunsets my ass. I clearly said Massachusetts. This isn't pretty. This is fucked up. I bet they also say that the water in the San Francisco bay tastes like cinnamon due to pollution...."

What about Elvira: Mistress of the Dark? Just because of this

I'm curious about the Halloween episode. I know Ross already picked something, but as a mental exercise, I'll throw some ideas. The game should be something scary, but somewhat obscure. That leaves out L4D, Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil, etc. Not sure if you have some requirements with licensing, reviewing mostly abandonware games or stuff that are hardly obtained through a legal way. That leaves out stuff like Hexen and Heretic. The Revenant "original" story, besides Diablo, reminded me the original Blood. A game using the same Duke Nukem 3D engine, with a similar dose of dark humor, pop culture references, and there's a bloody carnival where, in order to uncover a secret area, you have to kick zombies head inside a huge clown mouth that's opening and closing repeatedly. Like minigolf, but with zombies head. Besides, is there any better way to start Halloween than with the main character saying "I live again..." while stepping out a tomb. Any other ideas?

Your comment regarding the guns made me think "Jeez, he shoots guns in all the episodes", but them I rewatched the first episodes, and from 1-5, Freeman is unarmed. But now I have to rewatch it all over again. Not cool Ross. My thesis is not gonna write by itself.

Do like celebrities. They don't answer email. They tweet. It's public, and every tweet response probably answer 100 questions at the same time. Kinda of a FAQ like. Also, the fact that it's public and everyone can read it, is a favorable environment for comedy. Last week, one of the spoiled rich kids of a celebrity tweeted that everyone should drop school. Of course, he's rich, so he doesn't have to study, or work hard. Now, saying that loud, epic fail, sad and certainly funny. An email wouldn't had the same impact. Thus, tweet. Or use Google+ let it to post your messages automatically into Twitter. BTW, a FM response to that tweet would have been so cool. ("Hey, stupid rich kid, I have a PhD and a crowbar, and I know how to use both. STFU")

Ross, I've been checking the Steam site for the announcer pack. The number of votes reached quite fast to the 7k votes, and since then, it has tanked. It hasn't reached the 8k yet. It seems that the audience of this site is around that number. I used to receive updates directly from Youtube. I started to check this site after the whole Machinima issue unwrapped. You should make profiles in social a network. A fake twitter profile for Gordon Freeman. There are already 3 of them, the more popular followed by 2k. Yours should be far more popular than that. Just a couple of tweets per week, quoting the FM series in the context of current news (stuff like: "with the budget cuts in military research, it shouldn't be a surprise that our experiments are failing. Karma", or "If we we give Medicare to illegal immigrants, would that include the creatures from Zen?"). And every once in a while, promote an official account for Accursed Farms. You can do that in Google+, and forward automatically your posts to twitter. Many tech journalist do that. That should increase the impact and spread of your voice, beyond this website. That shouldn't take too long to set up. Check Google+. The community feedback is amazing and would love geek stuff like FM. Good luck, and take care