Charlie Brooker's BLACK MIRROR

I've assumed it just takes you through all the endings.
i didn't get to what happens if you find rabbit but still let your mum go to the later train without you?

I'd forgotten that other people didn't have a childhood soundtracked by spectrum loading noises!

"I'm defrosting mince"
i love that Dot Cotton guy

oh no wait, I'm dorky enough to re-run a bit of it from the start and if you don't follow Colin or talk about mother you get a couple of different options leading to a boring ending I hadn't seen before, but it prompted me to choose from key bits to go back to.

annoyingly it doesn't all hinge on if you choose Sugar Puffs like a psycho

when you watch the JFD video you do get an ad for whatever cereal you chose though

the O Superman bit was great, but it felt weirdly abrupt. maybe that's the nature of choose your own adventure. but if you're going to build a narrative where you can travel through time to be with your mother when she dies--a creepy and beautiful idea--there needs to be some groundwork.

it also felt against the mood of black mirror

if you refuse to follow colin twice, it eventually makes you.

It's pretty impressive how this is all put together, you don't get stuck on loops even though you can repeat the same choices twice and this is acknowledged without directly repeating the same footage ("I've told you this before", etc)

https://www.tuckersoft.net/ealing20541/nohzdyve/

bugger, was really hoping the download option was going to work and I could play the game.

I was wondering the same - i cant see how it would, as its just a "file". So I guess I'm not watching this.

you can upload and play the game here:

https://virtualconsoles.com/online-emulators/zx-spectrum/

I feel judged due to the fact I kept playing until I found a way to get the game rated 5/5 on the tv show, because... ratings are everything in the game industry, man

I kept being evasive with the shrink because she was played by Prevenge/Sightseers' Alice Lowe. that really slowed the narrative to a crawl.

lol me too. at first i tried to make choices that i thought the character would want to make (like he seemed reticent about sharing about his dead mom and the shrink seemed prying so i refused) but like you said that really stalled things. then i tried to take care of him to make sure he didn't hurt himself or kill anyone but the game really pushed hard to have him become a murderer too. i thought the train ending felt pretty butterfly effect'esque. the best ending was for sure the 5/5 rating ending and that also unlocked the contemporary game designer sequence.

didn't know this:

https://uk.webuy.com/site/history/ (3rd paragraph)

jeff minter has been talking about his cameo:

http://www.yakyak.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=88099&start=30#p1687038

http://www.yakyak.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=88099&start=30#p1687051

the promo clips for new episodes are out there

apparently one of the episodes stars Andrew Scott and has was scored by Ryuichi Sakamoto!

I watched the first one. It really didn't need to be an hour long, and the conclusion wasn't very interesting either. Neither was the main dude. Quite glad that it didn't go down the violent route I was expecting I guess.

If this is the Andrew Scott one, that’s the one I haven’t seen yet!

Striking Vipers - incredible cast, quite strange. I personally liked it because it tapped into several of my likes (fighting games! fucked up friendships! the role of fantasy!) but I’m not sure that it’s going to be that popular. Has a line that made me shriek irl though.

Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too - also quite weird but Miley is actually great in it even if it’s drawing very heavily from irl experience (possibly just me projecting though). Story isn’t hugely original or anything but I loved the song choices (NIN covers reworked with input from TRez) and also the constant mouse references are a bit on the nose? Really liked this one even if it was a bit insubstantial.

I'd assume the order's the same across regions with Fighting Vipers being the first

Yeah sorry I meant Stiking Vipers
What line did you mean?

The polar bear one.

Much like every other Black Mirror, I quite enjoyed these but they were all insubstantial and far too DO YOU SEE.

I didn't guess the route the Striking Vipers one was going to go in, but so far so predictable.

The Andrew Scott one was basically all about delivering that monologue but the plot was obvious as soon as you knew why he was at the help group.

Halfway through the Miley one and the highlight so far has been a framed Sugar Ape cover on her agent's wall.

Striking Vipers is easily the best of the new batch but that's not really saying much. As usual they start off quite interesting and don't really go anywhere. Miley Cyrus is really good in the Miley Cyrus one but it ultimately boils down to a middle aged white dude's idea of musical authenticity

oh man
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jun/07/black-mirror-miley-cyrus-rachel-jack-ashley-too

so uh, this reviewer has some decent comments on the plot but completely missed the central running joke that all of the music is Nine Inch Nails songs, with the pop star versions having cheery lyrics. cringing and giggling over here

The Cyrus we meet at the start of the episode makes manufactured pop that’s slick, well-made, personal (her lyrics come directly from her dream diary) and popular. She is very, very good at this. But by the end she has become, for want of a better word, Nickelback. She starts shouting very bad, very witless, completely anonymous grunge-lite songs back to back with her bassist (who has a nose ring, because attitude). She’s happy, but only because she’s adopted a hard shell of “authenticity” that’s arguably even more constrictive than her former persona.

I actually thought they were going to start having video game sex in all the different characters to really prove the TRUE LOVE, so I was disappointed by the polar bear throwaway.

we were denied the polar bear fucking we deserve

her bassist (who has a nose ring, because attitude) also seems to have missed that "her bassist" was Jack

grafting an entire review on to a templates premise of rockism and misplaced adherence to authenticity, completely failing to notice it’s just all nin covers

kind of beautiful

Moral of Striking Vipers: Video games make you gay

otm

not a furry though, apparently

except for maybe whoever was fucking people as a polar bear

polar bears have had a rough decade.

The Miley Cyrus one was fine. It should've been a lot shorter. The drag was apparent when it hit the Alexa comes to life bit.

I didn't read that Guardian article because of the choice of shirt he chose for his writer pic.

I thought the robot was one of the best parts and, although a total rehash of prior episodes trapping a consciousness in a machine, was actually fleshed out

It was, it just highlighted how meandering the first part was. When the robot came to life all of a sudden it was a different episode with a different vibe with odd adults are stupid hijinks.

too many undercooked plot segments

was most disappointed by Smithereens, all we got was some good Andrew Scott emoting and a too-generous portrayal of a Jack Dorsey type by Topher Grace

I dunno, just because the guardian guy may not be a big NIN fan and didn't get the in-joke doesn't mean he hasn't got a valid point that the episode denouement felt a bit rockist

Not that I can be particularly arsed to defend a guardian culture journo

he praised the other lyrics in the episode which were: a cover of another NIN song, and a nonsense version of “head like a hole” with funny lyrics written by Booker

you could make the argument for it being rockist or w/e but it really feels like a template being applied by a guy who has read a lot about music criticism but hasn’t a lot of interest in listening to music

I wouldn't dispute your latter point

i should buy the t-shirt though

wish it didn’t say “black mirror” on there, though. kind of gives the game away
https://store.nin.com/products/head-like-a-hole-x-black-mirror-tee

Brooker doesn't come across as someone who's that into music either tbh xp

tbf he’s had a lot of good people working on the soundtrack for this series with mixed results

it’s kind of turned into a soundtrack/actor/location showcase with the plots being a real mixed bag

Idk I didn’t think the episode applied a rockist judgement to the music? Ashley O was still writing all those songs but she wasn’t being coerced by medication into producing stuff that wasn’t how she felt anymore? I didn’t feel that it judged pop more negatively.

trent reznor is a rockism victim. made dark but poppy synthesizer album and was bullied into incorporating more guitars throughout the entire 90s!!

also there’s that elephant in the room which is miley cyrus’s entire musical career where she was a disney pop kid? idk, lots of unexplored angles in journalism, anyone wanting to write a little can have these tips for free

xpost I almost brought up how a lot of episodes remind of Until the End of the World because of the "soundtrack/actor/location showcase." The videogame episode in Brazil was disconcerting.

Topher Grace just sitting on top of a big old hill in the desert

I file NiN under “things I just don’t care about”

Idk if Reznor was really “bullied” into adding guitars in the 90s.

I’ve only seen the Vipers ep of the first season and if that’s the high point I’m worried about the rest.

Reznor getting his first No. 1 with "Old Town Road" is the best Black Mirror episode.