I have a gun card...I don't have the balls to dress as a badass and sling some bullets at a target.

That's one of the fun things about Cowboy Action Shooting - everyone is dressed like that.  At the Jackson Hole Gang shoots (where these were taken) there are easily 100+ people in attendance and everyone is dressed like it was the 1870s or 1880s.  It's great. 

And I'd be curious to see if they discuss why they decided to call something with no legs a "Hammerpede".

It is a tricky thing to do. If you can't interpret the emotions of an alien by their physical state, and you don't have the luxury of showing an emotionally-interpretable antagonist being cruel to that alien, how can you be sure that the audience will empathise with that alien if that's what you're going for. In short, I think it comes back to the Ripley-Queen fight in Aliens. Even though the Queen's suffered an appalling atrocity at the hands of Ripley and is only trying to survive at this point, the audience always sides with Ripley. Part of how that works IMHO is that the audience is unable to sympathise with the Queen due to its physical appearance.

Not to get too far off the topic here, but I think one of the reasons audiences don't sympathize with the queen is that much of it's posturing is aggressive.  It's hard to sympathize with an adversary who is made to look like it's always angry and threatening the hero.  The Queen and Ripley are near parallels of each other.  We see Ripley protecting Newt from the alien threat, but we don't really see much of that from the Queen.  There is the stand-off in the egg chamber, but the Queen was greedy and signaled the egg opening (yes, I still believe she was responsible for the egg that opened in front of Ripley).  Sympathy for the Queen could have been built by showing the queen desperately trying to save an egg as she left the royal chamber, and showing desperation and fear of loosing her offspring... and then having her pursue Ripley only after it is painfully obvious that she is not able to save any of them.

Happy Birthday!   

Watched Lifeforce. Wow...miserably boring, terrible movie. Kind of reminded me of how I felt about Scanners.

My thoughts exactly.  Actually, I've always felt that "Lifeforce" was made for the sole purpose of recording Matilda May wandering around naked for the sake of posterity.

And sadly that couldn't even save it from itself.

... and Let's not forget the main protagonist also gets a piece of alien tech following the final battle and before departing in a vehicle (Lex get's a Predator spear, and Shaw gets an entire spaceship).

It arrived...

http://instagr.am/p/QcnQt_BkNj/

Sweet! 

The 'xeno' thing doesn't really bug me (no pun intended), but what does disappoint me is the need to create classes of alien. 'Warrior,' 'Lurker,' 'Spitter,' etc.  I wish we could have a game where they were just 'aliens' like they were in the films.

I get why they do it: each class has varying strengths and abilities to help mix up the game play and keep things fresh so games don't spiral down into more of the same with each play.  But the end result will be people applying the classes to the aliens in the films. ...Kind of like how we had 'Runner' applied to the beastie in ALIEN3 because of a game.

That aside - I'm still looking forward to this release.   

Here is a taste of the upcoming Colonial Marines multiplayer Escape Mode.  This is actual game play footage... and it looks fantastic!  Holy crap!  I actually downloaded this from PSN last night to see it in full HD (which I highly recommend doing, BTW - or XBox Live if you are on that system).  I can't wait for February 12!  If this lives up to the hype this could be the kind of ALIENS game I've always wanted.

...Go a head make some popcorn - this is going to be good. 

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7UBQouJBns" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7UBQouJBns</a>

Still, it begs the question of where it stashed itself inside the Engineer.  I'm sort of envisioning the Deacon's arms in the Engineers, his legs in he Engineer's. ...sort of a nested Vitruvian Man type thing.

The Engineer didn't appear to react to the Deacon's birth.  I assume it was dead, and the Deacon was free to assimilate as much biomass as it needed.

Which raises another point: did the squid/hugger kill the Engineer, or did the growth of the Deacon kill it?

...chicken or egg... chicken or egg.

Just look at the inspiration Red Dead has on people.

Nice.

...I really need to get back to that game.  Just so much win!

[Unforgiven]

Unforgiven - BD

R.E.D - BD

The Avengers - BD

The Hatfields & McCoys - BD

Once Upon a Time in the West - BD

[Seb]

I may be misunderstanding you, Seb, or you me.

My comment was aimed at robthorn's rather disrespectful earlier post.

Sebastian was agreeing with you.    It's all good.

So, how exactly does the Deacon fit inside the Engineer's body? Unless The Engineer's organs... and muscles... and some bones are used in forming said offspring I can't see how there is enough space in that body for the Deacon.

I like it!