Vamp

Its not all intact but definately check out the Tomb of the Cybermen with the second Doctor.

The thing is, the style and imagery which are associated with Noir aren't actually that far from detective fiction elsewhere. I know people like to see them as an American only phenomenon but while that's the image and certainly the depression era gangster setting is one of the more defining images it doesn't mean that there is no other eras and locales where the look and feel is covered. The French and British were making great noirs alongside and around the American scene. If you love the genre certainly recommend you check out some more of how it can work beautifully in other settings. The '60s I would semi agree is late given the classic era of the movies BUT given the amount of modern noir there still is the setting could work.

I'd say for a start the iconic film noir image of the shadowy trilby worn silhouette standing in a dark misty alley is inspired by the earlier image from the 1880's pea-souper.

I get what you're saying, I mean a lot of the film noir style was taken from the experimental European film styles prevelant in Germany and such like, but I was sold on the game as an American film noir. Plus the few British noirs I've watched genuinely feel quite different. There's similarities admittedly but the style is slightly different. I mentioned the French ones, but I don't see them moving the game to France, as interesting as it would be. I just think there's another game to be had in the classic era of the genre and I'm not as interested in a British one in the '60's. I mean, Brick's a pretty great cross between film noir and teen fiction but I also wouldn't wanna play High School Noire. Although that's probably a bad example since I guess Brick's set in California but you get my point.

I'm the only one who didn't get much of a noir vibe from this then? I must not have watched enough Dick Tracy or something, I expected a much larger atmosphere of suspense and mystery, but eh. I should play it in black and white mode next time.

I think they were slightly holding back on it. I think its the lighting that prevents from fully creating that atmosphere. But then they based that on L.A. Confidential which isn't a classic of the genre by any means. I think there's an appropiate sense of bleakness to it. Film noir's are generally defined by their visual style but also their themes. I think the game, so far (I'm yet to finish it), pretty much ticks off quite a few of the boxes in terms of theme.

If I'm honest I just don't like some of the ideas thrown around. They don't personally appeal to me. I'm sure they'd sell. But I have no interest in being a criminal, of chasing criminals in 60s London or even the suggestion of going back to the 1880s which I feel misses some of the pre (more if we include the books that helped inspire it), during and post war vibe of the genre. I suppose the 1880's is late enough (debatable) to tick off the box in terms of modernist concerns that you can also find in the genre. I don't know if you'd fully achieve the sense of crisis in terms of masculinity that the genre comments on though.

Like I say, the only change that I'd really be interested in is handling a P.I. instead of a cop. The engine would work pretty much the same but you'd have the bulls breathing down your neck, less freedom and so forth. Although the driving would have to be improved because its one thing for a cop to crash into anything but a P.I.? Or maybe that's just my shit driving.

But then to me those are ideas for a different series. L.A. Noire is a game based heavily on the classic American noirs, and arguably the books they were based on, setting it in the 1880s or making a game about the Kray Twins takes it away from that ethos. That's not really carrying on the series. I can see why they might use the game engine to explore those topics, but I'd also like one carrying on in the genre of the classic American film noirs. Because that's what sold the game to me. I knwo people are excited about the whole facial recognition but it was the atmosphere and setting that sold it to me. Nothing else really.

Am I really the only one here who hates the idea of them moving the game to the future or into locations that don't really seem to suit it? To me the main reasons why I wanted the game and am enjoying it currently is that its set in the particular era that it is and based so much on the film noir genre. I certainly dont' want one set in London. Chicago might work, or New York I guess. Moving a decade or two into the future would be even worse in my opinion, I don't mind the idea of them going back in time to the period in between the wars (where the majority of the book influences come into play) or slightly ahead to the future (the 50s were still part of that classic period) but 60's London is something entirely different to me. If they're going to do another Noire game and want to change it up a bit than I honestly think the best thing they could do is just have you go from cop to private investigator. Being Sam Spade in a video game would be amazing.

That's not to say that I don't think they could make a good game out of the current engine set in London in the 60's or whatever else, just that its not the reason that I personally bought L.A. Noire. I wanted a game with that setting, with jazz music playing in the background, a morally corrupt world and all the other trademarks of the genre of movies and books that I enjoy so much and which they're only really scratching the surface of. To me its a genre game, and swome of the suggestions here would take it too far out of that genre. Not that there arn't British noirs of course, but they're a slightly different style anyway.

Just got this game and only played a few cases so far, loving what I see at this stage.

I hope we get a sequel that's set in the same timeframe and location but with you on the other side of the law maybe franchise it under GTA and have all sorts of crazy coll crossovers.

I'd hate that. I don't wanna be the criminal. Either another cop one, or a P.I. one I'd be down with.

The fact that I pre-ordered L.A. Noire from Play, they sent it out on the 17th, its meant to take 3-5 days and I haven't recieved it yet and can't do anything about it for 21 days. That and Best Buy over the road have it in stock for £10 less. I used to preorder games from Play and get them before the release. Grr.

I've finally started playing Oblivion and...I'm not sure how I feel about it. Its kind of addictive I suppose, but I'm not actually enjoying it that much. I'm just playing it because I feel I should, not because I'm having fun. Which is a very odd position to be in.

I think its more that a lot of people are assuming it isn't a plot hole. Which when you think about it is a sign of Moffat's genius, because he's shown that sometimes what looks like a fault is part of the plot, now everyone's going to be willing to explain away a plot hole as part of the story.

What was the urban legend about the guy on the roof in either Pokeman blue or red? I seem to remember there being something but god knows what it was.

Was it the second SmackDown where it was suggested that if you do 25/50 years of season mode you'd unlock a TLC HIAC?

But, that's not the same at all. Thee people we're talking about arn't suing because they've had a wrong done to them, they're hacking into a database illegally. Suing and an illegal act arn't the same thing. You can't compare them. Suing can't be a metaphore for illegally breaking into something. In the same way that playing a CD isn't a very good metaphore for murder, because one's bad and one's not.

If they wanted to sue then I couldn't give a damn. Go for it. But the conversation so far has been about them hacking into a database. Two very, very different things.

That's dangerous logic - because there's a risk of a criminal act, potential victims should be forced to take responsibility into their own hands?

You'd have a point if that's what I actually said, but since it isn't...

I'm saying that as a potential victim you have an opportunity to make yourself more secure and that since it is a relatively easy one to take it makes sense to take it. I'm not talking about people being forced to do something they don't want to. If you don't want to that's your choice, I don't give a damn, Sony doesn't give a damn, the bookmark on my desk doesn't care much either, but you have the choice, you can take it, hacking's getting more advanced, data can be lost, it seems logical to me that if you are really concerned about such things then it's a sensible step to take. I'm not exactly going to go round your house and hold a gun to your head until you do. Its your money, you can do what you want with it, take steps to make sure you don't stand to lose as much, piss on it, set fire to it, give it all to a hobo, I'm not going to tell you what to do with it.

I will suggest that you have the option to give it all to me though.

The key word I used was 'choices'. The choices we make as consumers changes all the time. But choice means you have the option.

You want people to get a seperate bank account for things they buy through PSN?

I don't want people to have anything. And I don''t really mean just for the PSN, I mean for the internet in general. But then I suppose it depends how much you spend online and how often. I just think its probably more sensible now days to have an account with a certain amount for use on the internet. So that way if any of the places you put your card details into get hacked into you don't stand to lose as much as you would if they had details to your main account. I think having an account for every seperate online thing would be a bit much, more secure I suppose, but certainly I see the sense in having a seperate account for online purchases now days.

I agree that it makes sense to have multiple account names/passwords for different areas of the internet - however I don't feel that increased security should be the burden of the consumer, it should be the responsibility of the corporation - in this case Sony - to ensure that their system is as airtight as it can possibly be, and kept so with regular security updates. It should be up to them to make sure that our data is secure, not up to us to change our password every other day just in case.

I agree that Sony should be as secure as they possibly can, I just think having a seperate online account is a logical step for consumers to take as well. I suppose I think of it as a bit more of a two way street. Sony should be as tight as they can be, but by that same logic I think consumers should probably see the risk of things as they are and take extra steps now. But obviously I'm working on my assumption that this could have happened to almost anybody. If it turned out that Sony's security system was seriously lagging behind everyone else's than it'd be a different matter. I don't really believe that they are.

It shouldn't be my responsibility to change things for it to be "more secure" - beyond having a not-easily-guessed password/security number, and my personal log-in and date of birth or security question or what-have-you, essentially the bare minimum required - why should it be up to me to ensure that my information, stored by them, is secure? Surely that's their responsibility?

It shouldn't be, but then people shouldn't be illegally hacking into this databases. Technology is always changing and so are the crimes we see related to it and so I guess are our choices as consumers. To me having a seperate account for the internet, depending on who you try to open it with and what you what to do with it, isn't that difficult and stops you from potentially losing more money. Its not a complete solution obviously.

It's no different with Sony or anyone else - you give them your information on the understanding that their system is entirely secure. Yes, something like this is unforeseen, but that's when the issue of customer relations comes in, and that's where Sony have massively let themselves down.

Like I say, if Sony did know how bad it was and they didn't tell people until now then they've really fucked up. And really even if they had the vaguest of notions that it could be this bad they should have told people. I'd like to think they didn't but yeah the cynical part of me does believe that it was possibly just their attempt to not tell people until they were certain so it wouldn't look bad on them, which then blew up in their faces. The trying-to-be-more-optimistic-in-general part of me likes to think that it's probably more tricky than that and they might not have known.

Obviously I don't think people should have to do this, in an ideal world they wouldn't, but it seems to me like an increasingly sensible thing to do. Like I say, maybe its just me being lame.

Im pretty much agreeing with what you say except I would add that although we signed up for PSN with faith sony had security that couldnt be beat, I think the fact its taking sony this long to find and fix the problem is that sony had that exact same faith.

Isn't that a good thing though? If Sony could find the hole in their security in five minutes, wouldn't that be more worrying?

That's a fair point, but they're also the fifth largest media conglomerate in the world - the fact that anyone could break their security is worrying enough. The "faith" that it was secure enough isn't what I expect from a company of anything like this size - they should be doing all that it is physically possible to do to prevent this kind of thing. And while obviously we don't know exactly what Sony did or didn't do, I think it's not too much of a stretch to say that their security wasn't quite as good as it should have been.

Combined with their complete lack of customer relations after the fact - I refuse to believe that they only just discovered gamers might have lost personal data, when they've been looking at the problem for over a week - I think it's fair to say there are still questions that they need to answer.

I've been having this conversation on another forum actually. I agree that Sony were piss poor in how late their response was, although I know little about security holes so I'm less sure of saying whether they only just discovered it or not, but I don't really blame them so much for being hacked. We've seen the way things have been going lately and I kind of have the opinion that it was going to happen to somebody and it could have probably been almost anybody. It just happened to by Sony. Apparently because they pissed some people off about an OS but whatever. I'm not really convinced that was the sole reason they did it. If they did rationalise it with that then they probably wanted to do something like thisanyway and its just the excuse.

Minds you I also suggested on the other forum that it's becomming common sense to have a seperate account for the internet. Which I truely do believe. I get why people don't bother, it seems lame, you don't really think about it and people are genuinely lazy but it would make you more secure. To me that's the same logic as saying Sony should have been more prepared for this. This was going to happen somewhere, and so getting a seperate account would be people's individual way of getting more prepared for this. But I get the feeling I'm in the minority with that view. In fact I'm starting to feel like I'm being really lame and stupid for thinking that way.

I think the problem people are having with you Matzat is you seem to be suggesting that decent human beigns would lose their obility to ptu a different operating system on a console and then decide to steal people's data. That's not, you know, a decent human response. That's the response of a criminal. I know personally what's annoying me about everything I read is people seem more obsessed with blaming Sony then whoever actually hacked into the system. To me its the latter bastards who should be strung up by their testicles and have controls flung at them. That and people are basically saying, "hey, if you piss these people off then you should expect them to steal all our data, its all your fault for pissing them off." It isn't.

I'm a bliever that this would have more than likely happened to anybody sooner or later. We've seen lately that hackers were getting better. It happened to Sony, which sucks for them, but us makes little difference. It was going to happen somewhere, to something. The only real bad thing I think Sony have done out of all this is delayed telling people about it for so long. But then I don't know how easy a case like this is. For all I know maybe they didn't have any idea just how bad it was. Its not like this happens all the time. I get being worried and being angry, but I'd be more willing to criticise A) our stupid society that likes to have everything on electronic databases now and B) the people who commited a criminal act.

It was pretty stylish and a good solid first episode to build on. There was something missing, which I think was that real spark or connection with the characters but that'll build anyway. That was also probably inevitable because of the kind of reserved character Zen is I suppose.

The Deadly Assassin (It's good, save for the one episode which is twenty-five minutes of Tom Baker running around a quarry for no particular reason at all. Someone tries to assassinate someone important, The Doctor tries to stop them; which, for some reason involves 'entering his own mind' and running around a quarry for twenty-five minutes)

Does that running around the quarry bit involve something to do with a clown? I have a kinda vague recollection of it in the back of my mind but can't make up my mind if it was this story, a different one or a dream...

Josh Ritter's pretty folky but also has some more rocky harder edged songs I suppose. Of course, everyone should listen to and love him anyway...

I'll bite even though these things generally never get off the ground. Good luck to you though.

The money for most of the promotions seems a little high, although I haven't played EWR for a long time so I can't quite remember the money side of things. But still, seems kinda high. You've got the FWA and All Star entirely the wrong way round. I'd question the idea of any promotion in the UK being at Cult level, but the FWA certainly isn't now. Bun it to regional, even then its probably too high, and make sure that All Star has a considerably higher public image than them. All Star is, without a doubt, the biggest promotion in the UK at the moment and has, really, been so for a good few years. All Star's risk should probably be lower and their merchandise and advertising considerably higher.

I'm reading 'The Enigma of Arrival' which is reading material for one of my uni modules this year, and I'm finding it a pretty hard slog to be honest. Its got some good reviews but so far I'm finding it one of those painfully slow books in which noting remotely interesting happens bar a few odd pages here and there. I've taken to skimming through it for any passages of interest to me rather than reading it as I normally would. I've also reading 'The Trial' by Kafka on and off. I wish I could devote more time to it but at the moment that's just not feasible, still, I recommond Kafka. Probably overrated in terms of importance but still an enjoyable, atmospheric and thoughtful read.

I've also just finished 'Anita and Me' which I totally recommend.

I'm wary about the split in a way. On a personal level I don't really want many more event episodes, they're good, but in small doses, that's why they feel like such events. More of them will just make them feel more common. Plus the smaller episodes are often just as, if not more, entertaining. I'm also wary that it'll make the series seem less special. People spend ages waiting for the next Dr. Who series and the excitement builds as it gets neaerer, if its on all through the year there's not so much anticipation. That and I don't know if it'll start to feel like over exposure, I know there's not more episodes, but if they're more spaced out it might feel like its rarely off the TV. That last points a little hard to explain but yeah.

Having said that I'm sure it'll be fine. The show's storng enough to try it for a series and see what happens. They're just my early concerns. It also means we might get more Doctor Who on darker evenings, which much like Sherlock, seems to me to be the ideal time.

I don't know which arguement is more tired and absurd, "Spiderman must be a white guy" or "Whoverse only exists in Britain"!

If all that makes your show special is that you see some British landmarks in the background, it better be on the travel channel otherwise it's a shit show.

The show is what matters, not what fucking skyline you see when they're having a discussion at night time. The diolague matters, the background is just the fucking background.

To be fair that was only a side point that I was making and wasn't the main gist of my argument. I'm not saying the Whoniverse should just be British at all, because Doctor Who's about a guy who can travell anywehre at anytime. And while Torchwood is in the same universe, it was about a small team based in Wales monitoring the rift. That made it different from a lot of other things on television, especially from shows of a similar type. A lot of the essence of the show was that it was set in Wales. The storyline is very important, but so's maintaining the feel of the show, otherwise it could just become any other show. I guess I just don't want it to become small team in flashy American HQ deal with alien threats. Sure it is about a small team dealing with alien threat, but it was about a small team of sociopathic losers based in a grimy looking HQ dealing with alien threats in a part of the world that is mostly ignored on television.

Plus RTD, and I'm a big fan of him actually, bigger than a lot of people, is the kind of writer that can get too carried away with an idea and I'd hate for it to be CSI with aliens because he thinks that'd be cool to do. Anyone who's read the Writers Tales can attest to him being that kinda guy. There's nothing wrong with that, but such a programme doesn't really interest me. Torchwood does.

So far the first two characters make me think that the original concept is in for a battering. And the last one just seems risky for the sake of risky. So yeah, the story is important, very important, and I hope its as good as Children of Earth which did break some of the original template of Torchwood and was all the better for it, I just hope they don't completely lose the identity of the original concept.

Oh and the suggestion that the mise-en-scene of a visual medium isn't important seems a little odd to me. The script is the backbone of a drama series, sur,e but the surroundings the drama takes place in can be a very important factor. Admittedly exchanging one city landscape for another doesn't sound important on paper, but setting it in an often used location could help make the series seem more cliche.

The characters really put me off. That and a lot of the first two series of Torchwood contained a lot of shots of Wales looking cool and night, which was at least fresh, so now I'm assuming we'll have shots of a New York/L.A. city skyline at night or something similar which really won't be.

I dunno, it might be watchable. Like I say, the new characters really don't do anything for me on paper, but maybe decent actors could do something with them. I'm certainly not expecting it to be anywhere near as good as Children of Earth. And I'm seriosuly concerned that it could be Americanised too much, which I don't say because of the network that's involved in producing it, more because I could see Russel T. Davies going all out with the Americanisms and thus it not feeling right. Not that Torchwood isn't similar to American series all ready, but there is a small essence of Britishness in the show that I kinda hope isn't lost. I'm also hoping it doesn't become too large scale. Children of Earth was a much bigger story than ever before, but part of the reason that worked so well is because the three central characters had been built up so well through smaller episodes in the previous two series.

Rhod Gilbert was great live. He's normally pretty good on TV, but yeah, he's great live. Jim Davidson, if you like his kind of humour (which I'm not normally much of a fan of) is a master at working his crowds and getting them to eat out of the palm of his hands. Some of his jokes arn't bad either. Although I got to see him for free, and I doubt I'd have enjoyed paying full wack for it. If Charlie Brooker counts as a comedian, which I suppose he does, then he nears the top of anyone's list I should imagine. Even if you don't always agree with him you'll enjoy the way he makes his points. Paul Merton is fantastic live, even if his TV work has slipped. I recommend the Comedy Store Players to anyone.

As an aside, I really can't stand Russel Howard. What he says is generally fine, its more the way he performs. He just has such a fake delivery that it's impossible for me to get into the joke and I just sit there thinking "yeah, whatever" because he doesn't even try and pretend that his anicdotes are true. I mean, I know mosto f them arn't for almost every comedian but to me a good comedian at least tries to make you believe what they're saying by at least pretending they believe it themselves. That's why I love Paul Merton, he'll say utterly bizarre random things and look like he's being dead serious when he says them, and then full his "I can't believe I just said that" face. Russel Howard has that face on the whole time. I'm also no fan of Noel Fielding.

And, while I used to appreciate what he was doing, the more repeats with Frankie Boyle I see the more I start to hate him. He wasn't any kind of genius, he just said things that no one else had the balls to say at the time. People rate him far too much.

Has anyone got a picture of Ricky Steamboat's son as he is now?