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[HALO: The Master Chief Collection]

HALO: The Master Chief Collection on PC

I got this with Steam vouchers at Christmas, when only Reach was available. Since then they have been regularly releasing all the games in chronological order, and we're at ODST now. Those two games I mentioned, I hadn't played before, so I thought they'd make good bookends to my thoughts on the series as a whole.

Reach has its ups and downs, but overall I enjoyed it. The bits I didn't enjoy was the gaming leaning into spectacle over fun. There's a bit with a space fighter battle, my enthusiasm for which waned after just a minute or two. I play Halo to get up in the faces of freaky alien weirdos with my death cannon, not spray lazers in the vague direction of  distant HUD highlighted dots. The rest is mostly fun old fashioned running and gunning. The elites were tougher then they had been in Halo 3&4, but the brutes must've been to anger management or something.

Halo: Combat Evolved
Not much to say that wouldn't be redundant after almost two decades. Shooty fun, a bit too much back-tracking and a welcome left turn into survival horror in the middle.

Halo 2 is hard as balls. There are bits that require some good luck and this game is usually quite unfair.

It's my favourite.

Halo 3 is my least favourite. In fact I'd played it only once previously. When it came out, neither I nor my good friend (lets call him Steve, with whom I had finished co-op campaigns of the previous games on legendary) had an Xbox 360. We had been drinking since lunchtime the day after the midnight release. A third friend called at about 8pm and asked if we would like to come around to his gaff and help him finish the fight. Stumbling into his flat around 9pm, our noses were assaulted by the smell of the 5 gamers who had been banging their heads against this game on and off since the previous midnight. Stevie and I Roflstomped the whole game by 1am.

TLDR: Halo 3 was disappointingly easy.

It was clear the campaign had suffered for the newfangled online multiplayer. Given they had roughly a million users online constantly for a good long time, it was probably worth it for Microsoft and Bungie.

This is why Halo 3: ODST surprised me. It's a short game, just a DLC/expansion pack?. I think dense might be a better description. It starts off slowly, with levels that look more like something out of Quake:Arena than the actual futuristic city its supposed to be. It quickly ramps up though, and it's slightly more challenging than 3. This may be down to your character not being cybernetic super soldier Halo guy. I can see myself dipping into this one a lot, with its compact levels, to sate my hatred for freaky alien weirdos.

Just Halo 4 to be released to complete the collection now. This game kind of just slid off my brain. I have no lasting memories of this, probably because at the time I was living with 3 other lads in a haze of alcohol and drug smoke.

Thank you for listening to my TED talk.

I liked the bit where they claimed the PC Brigade are trying to cancel Thomas Jefferson.

It's the same reason we'll never again see a pop artist as big as Michael Jackson or Madonna at their peak, or an athlete as famous as Michael Jordan.

I'd agree on the popstar front, but there have been several globally branded sporters since Jordan. I have no interest in Tennis, but I know Roger Federer is a Swiss man who is very good at it and that Serena Williams married that guy from Reddit. I actively dislike golf* but I know who Tiger Woods is.

I'd guess the majority of this forum don't really follow football, so you might not be aware that you can go almost anywhere in the world and spark a debate over whether Ronaldo or Messi is better**.

I agree on the Game of Thrones point. I think most classic entertainment of today will be TV shows.

Modern cinema is dominated by low risk super-franchises with solid brand recognition, committee designed to pull in as wide an audience as possible. Everything is PG12 now. A lot of the all time classics people are listing were rated hard 12 or 15. I remember constantly being frustrated in my early teens because all the movies I wanted to see were 15s.

*I understand that people like different things and that's fine, but fuck golf.

** I would argue that Ronaldo isn't even the best player called Ronaldo. If you knew football that would probably elicit a brief amused exhalation as you recall Fat Ronaldo

I suppose it's low risk, no one* is familiar enough with the source material to claim it's a poor adaptation.

*that matters

I suppose the same could be said of JK Rowling's work, even though I've never read it and have no intention of doing so.  I saw one Harry Potter film and it really, really wasn't my thing.

I think it's a wee bit trickier to divorce the sole author of a book from their work, than a collaborator on a TV show. I have no skin in the Harry Potter game either. I read the first book* and didn't hate, but I wasn't about to read the sequels to this book for wee kids** with their ever expanding page counts. My sisters are big fans of the series, but I know they haven't had a high opinion of its author for a while now. I don't know if this is the consensus among Potter fans, some may be burning the books, others may feel their vile opinions vindicated.

Look. I don't know if Rowling is transphobic or not and I don't care enough about her or her work to investigate further. It was just something I heard second hand and I probably shouldn't have parroted it.

Mssed the edit

*Back when the third book came out and the hype was really kicking in
** I was 19 and too cool for school

I suppose the same could be said of JK Rowling's work, even though I've never read it and have no intention of doing so.  I saw one Harry Potter film and it really, really wasn't my thing.

I think it's a wee bit trickier to divorce the sole author of a book from their work, than a collaborator on a TV show. I have no skin in the Harry Potter game either. I read the first book* and didn't hate, but I wasn't about to read the sequels to this book for wee kids** with their ever expanding page counts. My sisters are big fans of the series, but I know they haven't had a high opinion of its author for a while now. I don't know if this is the consensus among Potter fans, some may be burning the books, others may feel their vile opinions vindicated.

Look. I don't know if Rowling is transphobic or not and I don't care enough about her or her work to investigate further. It was just something I heard second hand and I probably shouldn't have parroted it.

Cheers Jim.  I believe Graham Linehan sort of puts himself in that category.  I've been watching Ralph and Ted on Youtube all week; I try and distance myself from the idea that Glinner's involved.

To be honest, there's no "sort of" — Linehan's gone quite, quite mad. I genuinely think he needs psychiatric help.

I haven't followed his recent developments too closely, but he does seem to have lost it a bit.  Shame - I'll always love his work on Father Ted, The Fast Show and Brass Eye.  I suppose it's fairly normal to like the creation but not the creator.

Worth remembering that Linehan was not the sole creator of those works. Dermot Morgans efforts shouldn't be dismissed because his former collaborator decided he wanted to be in Scunthorpe.

Don't forget "conspiracy theorist." Police detectives, arson investigators, coroners and suchlike are all conspiracy theorists because they assemble and arrange evidence before formulating theories which are tested in court.

While technically true, the examples you listed are neither called nor dismissed as conspiracy theorists because they have expertise and qualifications in the subjects they investigate.

I do not think it is unreasonable to dismiss an amateur who conflates presenting second hand articles  found on google with the difficult time consuming discipline of research. There is a fine line between "questioning the mainstream narrative", "attempting to deny reality" and downright "maliciously lying to confuse the narrative ".

Maybe it was mentioned earlier in the thread, and forgive my naivete, but what's TERF?

Internet yoofspeak that sensible people should only use ironically.

I'll confess that I have no firsthand knowledge of J.K Rowlings opinions of the trans community, but the debate here confirms my bias that she's not that great a writer, since she can't express herself clearly and unambiguously.

Robinson:  He's the Bolland who stayed.

Bolland is great and all, but he's no Cliff Robinson.

I just remembered a bit in Jon Ronson's fabulous book, 'Them'. He meets with David Icke's PA, who was in the midst of negotiations to get Icke into Canada. The Canadians were reluctant to grant Icke a visa on the grounds that the "space lizards" Icke claimed were running the world, was a dog whistle code for The Jewish Illuminati* Conspiracy. The Canucks considered Icke's whole schtick to be antisemitic hate speech and didn't want him spreading such throughout the great white north.

David Icke's long suffering PA had to try to convince the Canadian officials that David Icke genuinely believed in Space Lizards.

*Illuminati came up in predictive text. Spooky

Generally, the older generations are all coralled in Facebook and twitter, the rest of the internet skews young. I tend to dismiss terms like woke out of hand. It's just online yoofspeak, not to be used by sensible adults and certainly not meant to be said out loud, unless ironically. However, much like its sjw and pc brigade ancestors, it's used by pricks to try to discredit and silence people who tell pricks to stop being pricks. The sentiment being "I have freedom of speech so you have to shut up!".

The whole transgender thing is just another item on the long list of things I don't really understand but just accept. Like quantum physics, or the Kardashians. It's not hurting anyone*, so why get worked up about it.

Live and let live.

^Basically this^

What find even harder to understand, is why the likes of Linehan and Rowling, whose audiences I would assume skew liberal/progressive, are willing to sacrifice their reputations and credibility to knock a minority down a peg?

There are of course some sticking points. World Rugby recently banned trans-women from competing in Woman's rugby.  Can there be a balance between inclusivity and safety of competitors? Like I said, I don't understand it well enough to comment.

*Quantum physics is probably a bad example, it hurts my brain. Also there's a trend of new age hacks slapping the word "quantum" on their snake oil, but I'll find somewhere else to grind that axe.

If a owners of a bar let someone loudly profess the tenets of national socialism, then it's a nazi bar. Same goes for social media sites.

Well there it is. I always knew deep down, but now it's official.

This place is a sausage fest.

An Aberdonian friend brought some lornes back with him after a visit home. It was the most horrifying and terrible thing ever visisited upon the north of Ireland by a scotsman.