Fierce_LiNk

I have work and then football when this is on. I guess the plan will be to do that, come home to watch this and then The Walking Dead straight afterwards. Will be interesting to see which games turn up. I have no expectations, so we'll see what happens.

New season is up on Netflix! We're watching season one again before watching the second lot. It's fantastic. Winona Ryder is brilliant at playing this type of I'M ON THE EDGE GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY BEFORE I CRY role. Steals every scene that she's in.

Woooo. How does it work? Is there a conference of some kind or is it just a series of trailers or something else?

Except @Blade, right? Riiiiiiiiiight?

When is Paris Games Week? Looking forward to new stuff. Although, to be honest, Overwatch is taking up virtually every second of my gaming time. I have all of these games that I'm not playing because of it.

Tough game. Knew only one goal would settle it and luckily Martial put his chance away whilst Alli buggered his up. Great result. Chelsea away next weekend...

The downside of the dominance of tiki-taka football is that, imo, it's led to the degradation of the quality of crossing. You see so many corners that don't make it past the first man or too many crosses that are over-hit or under-hit. So much emphasis is placed on short passing that crossing and longer passing has suffered.

Yeah, should have scored from both of those situations. Although, think it was more Ben Davies defending really well in the first instance that saved it from being a goal. Final ball isn't good enough today. Also, delivery from corner and set pieces is terrible. No excuse for poor deliver from corners and free kicks, let alone crosses from wide areas.

If anyone can find the Ander Herrera of last season, please can you return him to Old Trafford for the second half. One of our best players last year. One of our worst this year. It's just not happening for him at the moment. Mkhitaryan is arguably worse...such a hit or miss player.

I also watched the original before this and there's a lot to be said for the slimmed down nature of the first film. It's very streamlined in terms of locations and plot, but I quite like that. It works really well for that space-age detective story vibe that they were going for. I thought the performances in this were great, notably Gosling and whenever Leto was on screen. But, Hauer was something else. I loved how each line of his was like poetic and he had a great story arc, much better than Harrison Ford's in the original. I've always felt that the focus was more on Hauer and the story was more about him. The film is a classic and it's changed science-fiction cinema for the better. I hope that 2049 also improves the genre in some way. I think that it can. I hope that they actually do get to do a third film and expand on this universe even more.

Not sure about it being better than the original, though! I'd have to see it a second and maybe a third time to come to that conclusion. Rutger Hauer was too enigmatic in the first film and might just be the difference between the two movies.

Great minds, eh @dwarf?

Saw Blade Runner 2049 this week. I had tons of reservations about this being made at all and was even more dubious with a different director other than Ridley Scott at the helm. However, looking at what a cluster fuck Alien: Covenant was and what a great job Denis Villeneuve did with Arrival, I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. We saw this on Wednesday and I have to say that all of my fears were swept aside really quickly. It's a really well-thought out sequel. The look of the film is on point, as is the music and atmosphere. It feels like a continuation of the universe from the first film, but expanded upon. It's a lot brighter and I'd be curious to see this again and look at how many scenes did actually take place in that neo-noir night-time landscape. Brilliant film, in my opinion. It compliments the first one nicely and doesn't do that annoying thing some sequels do by constantly paying "homage" to the first. It definitely wasn't a frame-by-frame recount of the original. I actually think it could stand up on its own rather nicely. My only criticism is what I mentioned earlier. I'd have loved just a few more of those classic Blade Runner night-time city scenes. But, the trade-off is that we managed to see more of the rest of the world and were treated to some excellent visuals in the process. Delighted with how this turned out and it should be the blueprint for how future sequels are made in any series.

So, the British government have weighed in on this and are not going to recognise Catalonia's decision to declare independence from Spain. Can't say I'm surprised, especially with the situation with Scotland potentially declaring independence in the future. I think we'll most likely see the other EU countries backing Spain on this one. I don't really know how they can begin to unpick this one. Surely if Spain bow to Catalonia, it will just open up a further can of worms for them with other regions wanting to declare independence? So, from their point of view, there isn't really an "incentive" to declare independence. From Catalonia's point of view, I'm struggling to see how it can begin to work. It would have to be a phased independence of some kind? I thought Brexit was complicated enough...

Just give us a new album, already!

Thank you for that very informative post. I've been following all of this with great interest, but I (before your post) knew very little on the subject. I'm still trying to form an opinion on the matter to see which side is in the "right"...if there is such a thing. The images from the scenes and events that took place recently were terrible and it's a very difficult time for Spain and Catalonia. I can't predict or even begin to guess what I believe will or should happen right now.

I've just realised that I didn't make a post for The Walking Dead: A New Frontier in this thread. I finished this a while back and had a fantastic time with the game. I just really enjoy this series and felt that the new characters and setting were a good addition to the game. Overall, I had a great time with the game and can't wait until the fourth (and final!) season to wrap it all up. I finished South Park: The Stick of Truth yesterday. I've been wanting to play this for a long time as I'm a fan of the show, although I tend to watch individual episodes and so haven't been keeping up with it and the sequence of storylines. It's a supremely faithful adaption of the show and it virtually feels like you're wandering around during an episode or season of the show. I can't think of many characters who don't turn up during the adventure! It's hilarious in places and there were so many sections where they just absolutely nailed it, particularly the: Cartman is a gigantic prick as usual and Butters was his usual pathetic self. Loved it. Two of my favourite characters and the transition for them between tv and game was seamless. Bravo! I'm looking forward to starting The Fractured But Whole next. Think I may start it later on today. Games of 2017 Rise of the Tomb Raider Beyond: Two Souls Metro 2033 Redux Metro Last Light Redux The Last Guardian Horizon: Zero Dawn PaRappa the Rapper 2 Mortal Kombat XL The Walking Dead Season 3: A New Frontier South Park: The Stick of Truth

@Eenuh has seen me play through lots of this and was trying to play Dragon Age: Inquisition when I came to that scene.

Who is on your team? I remember mostly using Butters, as Professor Chaos with a little bit of Kenny and Cartman used interchangably. I made my character a Thief for that extra sneaky feel. Oh, I had already done him before I posted that. Just did the quest when I got it and blitzed it. He's one of the more trickier bosses, but I overcame him in the end. Can't even remember who I had in my team. Probably Butters. I switched to Cartman towards the end. I've finished the game and absolutely loved it. Loved the battle system, the humour, the setting, the characters, the faithfulness of it to the tv show and just how bizarre it was at times.

Spent hours on this today. Al fucking Gore!

Cheers for that, Hero. I will get around to watching that this week.

A shame as I feel that he is a good manager and just needed more time. However, the performances were simply not good enough. Not replacing Lukaku basically killed off his Everton career.

I'm always sceptical about how much coaching players really need with regards to defending set pieces at this level. These guys are professionals, they're paid to play a game and you'd expect them (with all of the training, match experience and experience playing with others) to actually know how to defend corners, free kicks or crosses. If you tell schoolboys to mark goal-side, to catch or punch away the ball, the clear the ball away at the first opportunity, surely you'd expect professionals to do the same? That just doesn't make any sense to me. To me, that just seems to imply that the players aren't intelligent enough to play for such a high profile club. Some of the mistakes made yesterday were shocking and shouldn't be made at this level. Confidence does come into it, too. When you've got thousands of fans screaming at you and when you're coming up against world class players, then I understand that there are moments where you could panic or freeze, or something to that effect. That's the human element of the game. However, there needs to be a mental toughness that you need to be able to play at this level. Lovren clearly lacked it yesterday, hence why he was hooked off during the first half. I'm dubious about how much you can coach mental toughness.

He wouldn't solve all of them, but he might have solved some of them. The issue is mainly that the players just aren't good enough defensively and are making stupid mistakes. Part of that will be solved through coaching (how to defend from set pieces, etc), and part of that is through getting better defenders.

In fairness to Klopp, he identified the player who he knew would improve the defence (Van Dijk) and just couldn't get the deal over the line. It looked like it would go through, but Southampton stayed strong and blocked it. Getting a top quality centre-back isn't easy. We should know...Lindelof looks like an absolute limp-nut of a signing. Where are all the good defenders?!