Chindie

...Risso should get in on the games review act . Quite enjoy the rant at the end.

The game rights are a seperate thing. Hence loads of multiplatform Spiderman games being released while Sony held the movie rights (which they still hold but the deal appears to be heavily weighted to Marvel. See film thread ). Sony would need to negotiate exclusive rights to have a platform exclusive game, which is certainty possible but I don't know why Marvel would agree to it, unless it was part of the movie deal. Marvel don't seem interested in major game releases but I think they'd realise they're chucking money away allowing an exclusive.

The chainsaw slowly running up the aisle had me in stitches. My main criticism at the moment is Tulip being too much of a caricature. The same can be said for Cass but he is this larger than life Irish caricature so Gilgun nails it (how it plays in Ireland I've no idea...).

The Welsh dislike England more than vice versa. In my experience is a friendlier rivalry than many, having spent a lot of time in Wales with Welsh friends and drunkenly watching rugby matches between the nations . The rivalry with the Scots is stronger.

I made a really short trip in the car yesterday, I live in a really bright area and it was still pretty light out. I put on my sidelights so the instruments were a little clearer (but not really necessary, I could have read a book in the car easily) and so I was slightly more visible, not that I really needed it. I had someone flash me. I put the proper headlights on just to see if it really was needed and I had someone else flash me. words removed.

My issue with the Spiderman rumour is why it'd be a Sony exclusive... the only thing that makes sense is Sony negotiating exclusive game rights but even then... don't get me wrong I'd love a great (/better than Beenox) Spiderman hand as we've not had a really great one since 2 (and arguably the PS one based off the comics and TV series). Shattered Dimensions was alright. But I don't see it. Not exclusive anyway. I'd love to see what Rocksteady go on to. I don't think it'll be a Superman game though. Superman doesn't translate that well. And a Justice League game is too messy and you have the problem making threats for all these characters and not having it become a linear series of chapters. I'd kinda like to see what they could do leaving Arkham behind, I'd rather not see Arkham 4 with a different skin... so hopefully they're keen to push themselves. I had this sense that even they were tired with Arkham Knight, good as it was, hopefully that translates into something else. Happily see them adapt another property, as they're the only studio that seems to get it.

Switzerland's treaties with the EU in essence outline agreements that more or less replicate full membership of the single market, including free movement, with the proviso that if they renege on any element of it, the entire deal dies. The Swiss referendum to limit freedom of movement breaks that treaty. The EU is completely understandable in believing the Swiss can't break their deal and expect to keep the bits they like. Free movement is a tentpole pillar of the market. The EU isn't letting anyone, whether the UK, Norway and anyone else join the 'fight' to have the benefit of membership without supporting the fundamental pillars of the organisation.

It's unlikely the border situation will change. We aren't going to leave the single market and that comes with free movement.

Wollaston's switch is one of the dafter things in politics recently. She can no longer in good conscience support Leave because of the £350m lie, or more accurately that Gove and co keep hinting it could be spent on the NHS, which is an even greater bare faced lie. So she switched to Remain. OK, great... Presumably, however, she had some well thought out basis for supporting Leave that you'd hope would transcend fears of integrity of the campaign in the clear light of day. Wollaston will have to forgive me for thinking that either a) she's actually realised that she's wrong on Leave and wanted to switch while not admitting she was wrong on something fundamental so is using the lie to save face, b ) she's a complete idiot, or c) a combination of the two...

Episode 2 of Preacher was superb.

Yep absolutely. Gwent has been (almost ) universally well received and Hearthstone has printed money. They'd be silly not to give it a shot, especially is the outlay will likely be sod all in the scale of things. There's another rumour of wager is completely wrong doing the rounds suggesting Sony will announce a AAA Spiderman title. Which makes no sense. Unless Marvel's deal to get the cinema rights granted Sony exclusive game rights for Spiderman titles. But that's really unlikely. Stupidest rumour I've seen so far.

JK Simmons getting bizarrely stacked to play Commissioner Gordon for Justice League. This man is in his 60s. I'm in my 20s and barely 5x5 40odd kilos on a bench

Potentially Sony might have a Western game according to GAF. Some concept art has appeared from a Sony artist's portfolio that features very Western railroad expansion looking environment.

As per E3 thread, Gwent is getting a standalone release, presumably expanded?

CDPR are releasing Gwent as a standalone.

Absolutely agree that failings in Greece are not indicative of EU harm to the UK. Greece's problems within the EU are not problems that have much to do with the UK's own prospects. Staying in the EU doesn't risk us becoming Greece, just as the threats by Osborne of us being Greece if cuts didn't happen were disingenuous at best and lies at worst. The economic argument for staying in is miles from baffling. There is currently certainty in the financial world, Britain's place is predicable and steady - it's a member of the EU and that position is known. Upon leaving, that certainty goes out the window, every institution and business and financial entity has the rug pulled from under it's feet and the game changed, more or less overnight. That introduces risks and concerns that mean belts are tightened and risk aversity grows and everything suffers. That is going to cause economic harm in the short and medium term, and depending on the terms of Britain's relationship with the EU, which will change and alter over the at least 24 months it'll take to negotiate (during which time the economy will be all over the place as everyone guesses what's happening good and bad), might never recover to where they are now. The economic basis to remain is entirely logical. It would be amusing, if it wasn't also terrifying, that an awful lot of the Leave arguments aren't going to change if we leave. People are kidding themselves if they think we'll withdraw from the single market, and as has been said time and again, the rules of that deal mean we'll still be taking most of the burden of EU membership, but lose status at the negotiating table. This whole referendum has, as everyone predicted, been farcical. We have a Leave campaign that has an outright lie as a major tentpole slogan, and a Remain campaign that has never managed to sort itself out to explain the position, and has instead relied on a couple of slogans and chucking buckets of figures into press releases. It was always going to be a hard task making the case for Remain into easily digestible and understandable positions, and perhaps impossible, but I'm astonished at the pig's ear they've managed to make of it.

Some of the rights revert if they aren't used. That's how they got Daredevil back for instance, Fox made the Ben Affleck movie then did nothing with it for long enough time that the deal expired and Marvel got the character back. So they could wait for Fox to not do anything with Fantastic 4 for instance and get that back. Unfortunately Fox will absolutely not allow that to happen. The superhero movie bandwagon is making money and whilst X-Men isn't the biggest hit, it makes Fox money and whilst that happens they won't let any rights slip, even a flop like F4. They will reboot F4 in a few years, or try to smash the current cast into an X-Men crossover. Theres nothing stopping them making deals though. There was talk that Fox's X-Men rights were movie only and that they were negotiating with Marvel over extending that to TV a year or so ago, with the suggestion being that Marvel wanted F4 back in return. But that hasn't happened and IIRC Fox are now developing X-Men TV series. So who knows. I doubt Fox will be willing negotiators so Marvel might just leave it be and wait for things to wobble. Deadpool's success means that might take a while though, they are certainly making a Deadpool sequel and they have wanted to do X-Force for years where he's a big name, and the closer they can tie Deadpool to X-Men (before it burns out) only raises X-Men's takings. I don't think they'll have the Fox properties on board any time soon sadly. From my perspective, whilst it'd be great to have the X-Men on board, they exist in the comics as a strange world to themselves, with minor crossovers apart from tentpole events they are central to (AvX, etc), so that's not a huge loss to Marvel... but the stuff associated with F4... I'd love to see Marvel do Dr Doom properly, and it'd be great for them to have another huge villain, perhaps their best, on board. I don't even care about the F4 themselves. I just want to stuff around them. But it's not happening. The hope is that some of the more minor properties might be able to transfer by virtue of Fox not using them, like Taskmaster. But that's unlikely to include Doom or Galactus and co. Marvel is ok for now without them. Their slate has a bunch of new characters being introduced - Black Panther solo movie in 2018, Captain Marvel (a rare female character and another cosmic one to go with Guardians, and one they're trying to raise the profile of with Civil War 2 in the comics), Dr Strange introducing really weird magic and other dimension stuff to the universe (I maintain they'll explain this with quantum realm stuff rather than 'magic'), Inhumans (which'll be shit as theres only 1 good character in there and he doesn't speak), as well as new characters being introduced in sequels (Thor 3 introduces Skurge, Hela and the Grandmaster, Antman 2 is bringing in the Wasp, Guardians 2 might/should introduce Adam Warlock, etc). Eventually though you are looking at the much more obscure characters. We're already into tier 2 and 3 characters with the likes of the Inhumans, if they start delving into the cosmic characters the quality drops off fast (Quasar, Moondragon, Captain Universe...ugh). There are some decent minor characters, as said I'd love an Ellis era Moon Knight (who they might have hinted at in Winter Soldier) but he probably works better in a Netflix incarnation, the new Ms Marvel is universally loved and would be a good diversity choice to adapt (Muslim teenage girl) and they've got Blade and Ghost Rider back if they think they can do some of the more 'oogey boogey' stuff and make it fit. The big problem is going to be villains, especially cross over ones. But yeah, it'd be great to whole lot under 1 roof. Best bet is doing a Sony style sharing agreement, but I don't see Fox being happy with that and I don't see Marvel agreeing to the kind of terms Fox would like, and currently neither needs to compromise. All of this makes it even more funny how badly DC managed to **** up. Warner Brothers can do anything it likes with these characters, and they've got the Big 2. And so far they've **** it with no sign of sorting it out.

Hence the Witcher swords not necessarily being the best...

Pretty much all DC characters are tied into Warner Brothers, because Warner Brothers effectively owns DC Comics. Marvel on the other hand... Marvel partly owns the rights to the Hulk, they share them with Universal who have a binding interest in distributing any Hulk movie, however it seems this only extends to a solo Hulk movie, which appears to be why they haven't bothered doing another Hulk film... There's a similar deal in place with Namor, who is basically Marvel's Aquaman, but better, which was only recently confirmed. Any character that can be defined as a mutant or is associated closely with X-Men/mutant characters tends to be lumped into Fox's rights, who also have everything associated with the Fantastic 4, which is surprisingly large amounts of Marvel canon (some of the best villains and biggest threats got lumped into F4 rights because they are most closely associated with them, despite characters like Dr Doom, Galactus being whole universe threats on the page. There is also a co-ownership with the Skrulls, but not the specific character Super Skrull, which sits wholly with Fox). Fox's rights are so far reaching Marvel isn't even allowed to use the word 'mutant' in reference to any character, hence the twins origin in Age of Ultron is changed completely. This has also lead to some weird characters being caught in limbo - Captain Britain, who is a daft but interesting character (he's an odd mix of Captain America and Arthurian legend - think Cap crossed with Dr Strange with a bit of Excalibur) is generally believed to be held with Fox, despite not being a mutant. His sister is Psylocke, who appeared in Xmen Apocalypse without a British accent...but is a mutant. Similarly a character called Gladiator, from an alien race in the comics, is apparently held by Fox because he's most closely associated with the X-Men, and by extension that entire alien race is also in Fox's hands. Marvel are so hostile to the Fox deal that they started to try to undermine it - they binned the Fantastic 4 comic after years of continuous publication, they've heavily cut back on X-Men merchandising (they basically didn't allow X-Men toys to be made for while) and started to alter the characters and focuses in the comic to try to alter the status quo away from the movies (they killed Wolverine in the main continuity and had a female clone, X-23, take his place for instance), and also pushed the Inhumans comic to replace X-Men (which was never going to happen). Then theres Sony. Sony have Spider-man and associated characters. They wanted to establish a Spider-man universe with characters like Venom, Sinister Six and even Gwen Stacy having their own movies. However, with Sony's troubles and the Amazing Spider-man reboot not taking off as well they'd like, Marvel negotiated use of the character. The exact extent of the deal isn't clear. Initially it seemed that Marvel could use the character and would work with Sony on the creative direction of the character, but Sony would have final control. However Kevin Feige, the big man at Marvel, suggested that the deal meant Marvel basically controlled the character in everything and Sony's control is a bit of a formality. Best guess is Sony on paper have final say and probably distribution rights for solo movies, but Marvel hold the reigns now. And then went and put the best Spider-man theres been in Civil War as a glorified cameo to rub Sony's nose in it. The rights stuff is very strange. Minor characters are constantly switching around (Taskmaster, a villain and sometimes antihero, who has fought every character going, was with Fox but then was back with Marvel earlier this year, Man-Thing was bizarrely held by Lionsgate for years then Marvel suddenly started namedropping the character as a gag in some shows), and the rights are different for movies and TV in some cases, and games are completely their own entity. Hopefully Marvel eventually get all the rights back, or at least the ability to use the characters, as increasingly Marvel is going to be scraping the barrel soon with new names that can carry a movie with box office potential (I'd adore a Moon Knight movie, but it'll never happen. TV though, maybe).and characters like Wolverine, Dr Doom, Galactus are really heavily associated across Marvel comics and not just their home line.

There's now reports again that the Rogue One reshoots are enormous and they even have a different bloke overseeing them. Beginning to think the Entertainment Weekly report was damage limitation.

Boon changed his Twitter pic to an image that was 'cleverly' either 11 or 2. Given that MKX only came out a year ago and they've only just done extra content, nobody is surprised at Injustice 2. I like Netherealms stuff so I'll happily play a sequel, but hopefully they can tone down some of MKX's quirks, have slightly better character design, and a better excuse of a story... Character design, having seen the poster, is still bad

There isn't enough money in the world that could make me watch that. I think the only way I'd be capable of watching Farage would be if he'd been nominated to open the Ark of the Covenant and they were live streaming his face melting off. And Cameron is just a unlikable clearing in the woods.

'Addicting'. It'll be said in the E3 coverage somewhere, as American games journalists love the word.

Just watching last night's episode. It's not as bad as the first so far but it's still a mess. The SIARPC section was always filler but now they've made it incredibly cringeworthy to watch. Chris Evans is still the worst thing about it. On a completely separate note, Sharleen Spiteri is finally looking a bit ropey.

Looks like Bethesda also may show Evil Within 2 (...why?), Wolfenstein New Order 2 (Day One!) and announce Prey 2 is back on the table, which looked fantastic 5 years ago and then got binned. If Prey 2 can live up to what they had back then, that's a potentially awesome title in their hands. Big ask though.