Gravity

[Bridge]

Like, I don't know how people can enjoy playing stealth games or horror games (like Penumbra and such) with a crowd of people watching on. In the case of the stealth games i'd be pressured to do something cool and not just

You could try changing your playstyle then. Usually in stealth games I try to ghost everything on the first attempt which sometimes is only possible with very precise timing and a thought out plan or not possible at all hence I reload often. If you know other people are watching I'd think you wouldn't take as many risks; probably take things slow and live with your mistakes whatever they might be. You could also try playing at a lower difficulty if there is one. What I think is cool personally is being prudent (within reason) and succeeding. Doing flashy scripted stuff is also cool but it's not the only way to get people interested in watching.

In the case of a horror game i'd be broken out of the immersion by the person (s) watching on (and probably telling me to do stuff).

I don't think it breaks immersion that much. If it's possible for me to be reasonably immersed watching a let's play I can only assume that the one broadcasting or recording is perfectly capable of being immersed. It's a different experience sure, but I don't see how it's inferior by default. Total immersion isn't really possible anyway IMO.

[Cuyir]

@ Bridge:

I play stealth games in a very specific way. Example, in Dishonored sometimes I would go through a section silently and decide to re do it so I could test myself in a planned attack. Like, say.... jump-kill one guard, freeze time before anyone realizes, blink-kill the second guy and send a bolt to the third guy. All before time starts rolling.

If I screw up I'd want to reload.

Or in a simpler scenario, I would be reloading often when I get spotted, which isn't fun for the people watching. Most people watching would go ''oh come on, i'm bored. You have shit tastes. Kill that person and move on." Which is why I don't like having an audience, because my playstyle requires loads of reloading because if something isn't perfect enough, i'm going to reload.

As for atmosphere focused games: I play them headphones, so I wouldn't be able to hear the people that are sitting behind me. You bring up the point of view of someone streaming gameplay through the internet. It's different having people near you and watching than just having people watching you in a stream. I for one wouldn't be paying attention to the comments in the stream that much while having people near you breaks the immersion for me.

The only games I was able to highly enjoy playing while being watched was OoT and MM but those times they were special situations.

[Bridge]

I play stealth games in a very specific way. Example, in Dishonored sometimes I would go through a section silently and decide to re do it so I could test myself in a planned attack. Like, say.... jump-kill one guard, freeze time before anyone realizes, blink-kill the second guy and send a bolt to the third guy. All before time starts rolling.

If I screw up I'd want to reload.

Or in a simpler scenario, I would be reloading often when I get spotted, which isn't fun for the people watching. Most people watching would go ''oh come on, i'm bored. You have shit tastes. Kill that person and move on." Which is why I don't like having an audience, because my playstyle requires loads of reloading because if something isn't perfect enough, i'm going to reload.

Hey, I'd watch. Most people don't really even have patience for special challenge runs anyway but I'm fascinated by them and do them myself. Sure, if the person playing absolutely sucks or the particular challenge is too difficult it may drag on, but I love seeing how other people play (most of the time). If you ever stream let me know.

[Kreekakon]

So hey I watched this movie just now after it's been out for almost a year, and I'm digging up this good old thread to share some thoughts on it.

You know me! Spoiler free!

So to begin with the film's "direction" because it is obviously the main focus of the entire thing to begin with. "Direction" in this special case refers to camera angles, special effects, sound, and the general art of having that all put together through the director's visions, and guidance.

It is downright spectacular. And that's coming from someone who was watching the movie on a measly computer screen instead of full IMAX 3D.

The greatest triumph of the film's vision is capturing the tone of space. Whether that is portraying the danger of space, or the general eerie silence/nothingness of space. Debris is flung around at bullet-fast speeds, and characters are constantly in danger of losing their handholds, and just floating off into nothingness. It captures very well the fear of helplessness of floating in Zero-G space that I am sure the director intended for us to feel in the film.

It is only enhanced further by the amazing visuals which from what I could see were super detailed down to the last shred of debris which I am very regretful that I did not experience on the big screen.

There's not much else I can say about the vision of the movie without repeating myself, so let's move on to the characters, and the story. They surprisingly worked very well. This I believe is because the director knew exactly what type of movie he was making, and what sort of story telling he would have to do to make the film work best (I will elaborate below)

The film opts for a very VERY simplified story; stripping everything down to the bare essentials of human beings trying to stay alive in an isolated scenario. The plot is mainly driven forward by the characters trying to get to their salvation with things not going quite as planned along the way. The reason I said earlier that "the story only works because the director knows what kind of movie he's making" is because the movie is only 90 minutes long. With a such a simple story, and not much further to carry it, pushing for a longer runtime would make the movie outstay its welcome VERY quickly. SO I applaud this decision.

If I have to criticize something in the story it's that with so much going wrong for the characters it can seem a bit like that things go wrong way too often to the point that it was starting to get on my nerves a little. Thankfully the movie ended, and wrapped itself up before such annoyances were able to grow beyond anything minor.

So in general, I'd say that I'd recommend this movie, but implore you to not view it as a typical movie with a narrative, but to view it as a very unique experience.