Example; the Legend of Zelda: BotW and TotK weapon degradation system. At first I was annoyed at it, but once I stopped caring about my “favorite weapon” I really started to enjoy the system. I think it lends really well to the sandbox nature of the game and it itches that resourcefulness nature inside me.
Sonic Adventure 2’s mech stages. I actually loved those stages and was really surprised to learn that so many people didn’t like them, I always found it so satisfying getting good combos!
The Zelda complaint is extra bullshit considering other open-world games like Just Cause do exactly the same thing by giving the guns limited ammo, so you constantly have to switch weapons based on what the enemies drop.
I think there would have been less issue with the Zelda weapon system if they started you with a bigger inventory space or made the tree guy who expands it someone you talk to and learn where to meet them later at the beginning of the game.
That is kinda what happened in Tears of the Kingdom.
I think I missed that because I saw him in another spot wandering around before he went to the central hub place he stays at for a long time
Can’t you pick up ammo in the Just Cause games? It’s been too long since I last played.
That being said, I like how Dying Light handles the decay system. You can repair a weapon so many times before it becomes completely useless, but in the second game I think you can just always repair stuff if you have the means.
I think if you’re comparing open world games to open world games then yeah, BOTW doesn’t do anything too terribl differenty, but when you compare BOTW to other Zelda games then it’s very different and that’s where the criticism comes from.
Personally I feel BOTW is a very competent open world game, probably one of the better ones I’ve played but I still didn’t gel with it because I was already strongly feeling fatigued from too many games becoming open world and not making that leap particularly well (Mass Effect Andromeda and FFXV coming to mind for me personally), what I wanted was a more traditional Zelda game and that’s simply not what BOTW was.
Considering in prior Zelda games you didn’t have to worry about your sword being unusable or your shield breaking (inb4 “what about…”, there’s like three circumstances in a dozen plus games, cmon.), I can understand why folks weren’t so keen on it in the new ones. Yeah you could run out of magic, arrows, or bombs, but that boomerang wasn’t going anywhere.
BotW is just not a Zelda game at all. It is a very mid outdoor walking simulator with fetch quests. I don’t care about the breakable weapons, even. I want the collection of tools, the long dungeons with puzzles using those tools, and the bosses vulnerable to those tools.
That is why I wrote specifically “long dungeons,” yeah. Those are simple and short, all the same little floating skulls, maybe one treasure that is a mild head-scratcher to get at. The boss fights in there are barely distinct from each other. It feels cheap compared to previous releases.
They did put all those tool puzzles into shrines. But they are one-offs and simplified. It takes longer to find a shrine than to solve it. And too many of them are just “fight this same little spidery guy again.”
The whole experience strikes me as Zelda for people who hated the majority of the content in previous games.
that boomerang wasn’t going anywhere.
Tbh, if I had a boomerang as a weapon, I’d get precisely one throw out of it (whether I hit anything or not).
I mean if I run out of RPG ammo in GTA I can buy more for a universal currency I don’t have to keep beating crime lords down with a big stick until one of them drops a fresh one.
People have a boner for Simpsons seasons 3-8, the Conan years.
The Simpsons were excellent pretty much through season 12, much of seasons 13 and 14 are still legit.
I don’t disagree that most of the best episodes are in that era… But Trilogy Of Errors is forever my favorite Simpsons episode, and that’s S12E18. (Linguo… Dead??? “linguo IS dead.”)
I woukd go as far as to say that seasons 9 - 13 all contain at least one ‘top 30 of all time’ episode.
The fall off was not swift with Conan’s departure.
The newest season has a nicer animation style I’ve noticed. It feels almost season 8ish, and has none of that digital gloss that pervaded in the last ten seasons. I’m genuinely interested to see if they stick with the classic almost hand-drawn style.
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Between season 18 and 19 was when the movie came out it IMDb’s dates are correct.
The truth is there are SO MANY great episodes of The Simpsons. Even the current seasons have a lot to offer.
I also think that the earlier seasons get an advantage because they’re the episodes we’ve all seen dozens of times.
Obviously I won’t deny that the earlier seasons have 10/10 episodes. Maybe there are fewer 10/10 as you go along, but even a “bad” episode will have some great jokes in it.
In fact the “I’m a sign, not a cop” meme/macro, that’s a season 20 episode.
Omg I love that episode too. I quote that grammar robot so the time “shuddapa yer face” “shut up your face”
I also am a software developer and use 123 fake street for testing forms all the time.
I’m surprised at how late it was, would have assumed it was pre double digits
I thought he was a party robot 🤖
Rewatched the Golden Years of the Simpsons recently and I think it’s crazy that season 2 isn’t included in that era. Season 2 Simpsons is fantastic.
Yeah I think seasons 4-12 are the kind of ‘safe’ era, but you can go a few seasons either way and still get some bangers, it’s just a little more patchy.
The Original Mafia game is generally criticized for being a linear game in an open-world, but I think its linear nature is one of its strengths, because it gives the narrative a tight, driving focus that open world games tend to lack.
Red dead redemption 2 was pretty linear and I think it’s one of the best games
In the case of rdr2, it has a linear story, but a plethora of side content the player can engage with outside of the main missions. In Mafia, there was a single person that would sometimes offer you little missions to steal faster and better cars, but otherwise had no side activities whatsoever in between driving to and from the story missions. The lack of side content was the main complaint.
Shadow of the Colossus was linear, but I don’t recall anyone complaining.
I think Mafia received that criticism because of its surface level similarity to GTA, which is known for packing a ton of random side content in its open world.
In Mafia there is genuinely nothing to do out in the world when driving around outside of the main story missions, except for occasionally a mechanic at a garage will offer you some small mission to steal a newer and faster car. Because of that, people complained that the open-world part was pointless and a waste.
Is this the one where I kept trying to go visit my mom (as part of my belligerent insistence on looking for stuff to do in the open world after every mission), but the game wouldn’t let me go into any building that wasn’t the next story mission, and then later the main character got chewed out by his mom for never visiting her? I did find that annoying.
That might’ve happened in the sequel? I don’t think you ever see the main character’s parents in the first game, but I do recall visiting them when you come back from WWII in the second game.
I wasn’t a big fan of the sequel, since I found the main characters to be unsympathetic assholes.
I think you’re right, it must have been the sequel!
Was it? You were in an open environment
and you could do the opponents in mostly any order.Scratch that. I guess I’m think of post game when you can replay the battles.
I’ve only played 2 and I feel the same way about it. I wish more games did this approach of using an open world as a setting for a linear game to perform.
You get the best of both worlds with this approach. The feeling of the world being more real and lived in, whilst having the tightness of the storytelling of a linear game.
I’ve always defended how mafia 2 did it and never understood why people wanted it to be more open world. The story had me gripped too much to even think about that stuff.
I always find it weird in some open world games where something in the story is described as being a race against time or so important it needs to get done now, but as the player you can just forget that for a bit and go do something else before continuing. Even just the ability to do that takes me out of it.
Mafia 2 was just the best damn looking game I’ve ever played. No other game has sold the late 50s to me in a way that I actually thought I was there
It’ll be a game I’ll always remember fondly. I still think of that ending to this day, one of the best.
Forspoken is low key incredible and like, exactly one sound bite sealed it’s fate, once it became a meme, people already made up their mind about it.
It was one of the best games I played last year and I found the story to be compelling and the gameplay fresh.
I think it’ll be regarded as a hidden gem in the future unironically.
It also didn’t help that it was one of the first $70 games when the norm was $60.
A big complaint I saw about the live-action Cowboy Bebop adaptation for Netflix was that the acting was too cartoony/over-the-top.
Personally, I thought the acting was spot-on for what they were trying to accomplish. It was meant to be a live-action anime, so it was never intended to be 100% tethered to reality to begin with. The characters are meant to be characters, and I thought they did a great job with it. Spike, Faye, and Jet were all perfectly-cast, IMO, and they all felt like their original characters felt from the animated series. There are so many times where you can just close your eyes and listen to them talk to each other, and it feels exactly like it felt watching the anime on Adult Swim back in the early 2000s as a kid.
I honestly loved the live-action adaptation and thought it was amazing. I’m still immensely disappointed that the reception was so poor that Netflix decided to cancel it halfway through the story. There are so many characters I wanted to see that didn’t appear until later in the original series. I would’ve loved to see a live-action Toys In The Attic or Heavy Metal Queen.
I really liked it too, and was deeply disappointed that it was cancelled prematurely.
TBH, it seems like Netflix cancels everything that I really end up enjoying, and dragging out shows that should have been a limited series (e.g., Stranger Things).
Yea, if anything my main compliant about the show was that they took away too much levity.
Cowboy Bebop had some really stark messages about family, relationships, and the impermanence of time - and it delivers that through characters that live life fully in the moment and run from their fate. In the live action version the characters were too willing to fall into morose reflection and focused too much on their eventual fate - for me the seriousness of the show really undercut how serious the underlying message was.
I wholeheartedly agree. I also loved the live action and I usually hate live action. It definitely isn’t because of nostalgia.
I heard a lot of complaints about the twins in borderlands 3.They’re shallow, they’re obnoxious, they remind you of wanna be tiktok influencers, on and on.
That’s not a bug, that’s a feature. Guys, Handsome Jack was bottled lightning. He was a masterpiece of good writing, good design, well placed improv, and just plain dumb luck. They were never going to pull that off again. You’d need to open a real vault to find that level of treasure.
The Calypso’s are exactly what they say on the tin. They’re all those obnoxious, unfunny things I mentioned because sometimes villains aren’t well thought out, complex characters. I fucking love shooting Troy in his smug hot topic weeb face. I don’t need to consider the complexity of a man driven to an extreme or the show erosion of one’s moral character in pursuit of power, they were two shitty kids on an ego trip with no regard for the damage they did. It is plain, and simple, and easy.
Are there problems with the rest if the story? Absolutely. Are there some awful plot-holes? Oh my fuck, yes. But are the Calypsos the thing that ruined the game? Fuck no, they’re fine and perfectly shootable as a bad-guy needs to be.
Just gonna chime in to say I bought Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands cause it’s on sale right now for like $12 on steam (the season pass is only $5 too) and MY GOD IS IT AN ABSOLUTE BLAST TO PLAY!
I’m just having straight up fun with this game, and I’m already wishing there was a sequel coming out tomorrow so I could dive right in when I finish this one. The bright vibrant world is fun to explore, the enemies are entertaining to fight with their quips and banter, the new mechanics (spells instead of grenades, new dedicated melee weapons and inventory slot, enchanted rings/amulets/armor to change that can all act as individual class mods to switch up your play style a bit) feel right at home in the fantasy setting.
I’ve heard about the lack of endgame and DLC stories, but I don’t care. I’m just having fun with my bowguns and magic missile launchers.
I just beat Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days and they said it was long and tedious but I really enjoyed it. It’s a lot darker than the other games and had the potential to be my second favorite after 2 had they remade it (and maybe favorite if they kept multiplayer and revamped it to allow it in story mode). Just watching the “HD” cutscenes reminded me just how much of a missed opportunity that was.
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I saw the original comment and honestly, if your only exposure was the HD cutscenes, it’s like… 95% eating ice cream scenes. It paces a lot better when you’re actually, you know, fighting shit. Lol
I couldn’t figure out the spoiler tags or I’d have left it up. I played it out on my DS so I got the full experience. If I remember correctly even if there wasn’t dialogue you’d still get a short cutscene of the gang eating ice cream after a long day of fighting stuff, which (for a middle schooler at least) really built up a connection by the end of the game.
I also can’t figure out spoiler tags, but yup, and during certain spoiler-tag worthy moments you also are missing someone or two, and Roxas eats alone. It’s kind of an interesting structure, especially for a game that was meant to be played with friends and especially for folks going through a confusing time in their life like a middle schooler.
But also you get to play as literally everyone, including their unique weapons. Ever see Donald glide? It’s truly a sight.
I never thought a game could give such an emotional gut punch by asking ::: who am I going to eat ice cream with?! :::
Everyone shits on Star Fox: Assault for shit controls. Which is half true at best, as in it makes you chose between 3 options (option C being the correct modern one) and the one the cursor starts on (A) is indeed shit. I mean it’s remotely annoying once, but like come on, it’s not even a hidden setting, it MAKES YOU CHOOSE!
Joker: Folie à Deux.
The first movie was not about Joker, it is about Arthur. Joker is the unfortunate identity he takes on as a result of the events of the first film. But at the end of the day, he was just a guy. He was delighted but bewildered at the people rallying behind him.!Folie a Deux picks up is after the police inevitably apprehend Arthur. He is on medication, and speaking to a mental health professional regularly. He doesn’t want to be Joker, but everyone around him expects him to be. The tragedy of the ending is that Arthur rejects the love and admiration he has earned, knowing it will not redeem him to the people who hate and fear him now. He chooses to be completely alone and powerless to stop hurting people.!<
As far as the musical numbers went, they were infrequent and clearly a representation of the connection between Arthur and Lee. There was at least one scene where we view Arthur from the perspective of onlookers after he finished singing and dancing, but all they saw was him staring at a TV or something. I always felt like the songs added to character development, but even if they weren’t your thing they were brief and heavily outweighed by scenes with just dialogue.
Lord of the Rings (the books) are terribly written by modern novel standards and while the story is amazing their value purely as literature is quite low. I will always defend people who loved the movies and couldn’t get into the books.
Thank you.
I’ve tried so hard, multiple times (years apart) and just can’t read the books. I read the hobbit fine, that’s a great book, but the trilogy I just found myself skipping pages to my favourite movie parts. It just went on and on. It’s a shame really, I’d love to have read them.
I started with the Hobbit really wanting to finally read the Lord of the Rings but I couldn’t get into it
Meanwhile I read the books as an artful evasion of an english assignment as a child but the movies just seemed too long for me to digest.
Maybe if they were packaged as a TV show but not at all changed in terms of content I could manage to get through it all in a day or so
Been feeling some FOMO about the books, FOMO gone!
Yeah, I stopped reading The Two Towers halfway through when it switched to Frodo’s and Sam’s perspective and I knew it’d just be a slog to get through.
Yea - the endless stair case is what I think of whenever I recall Tolkien’s writing style.
I understand where you’re coming from, but I disagree completely. They are written in a different style than we’re used to today, but they’re masterfully done. To me, the movies are largely good adaptations, but the books are far superior.
But that’s the nice thing about taste: everyone’s entitled to their own.
I’ve read the Hobbit and the fellowship a few years ago. I absolutely adored the Hobbit, genuinely think that is an awesomely written book. Fellowship however, is not a fun read, despite the content in the book actually being good. But the act of reading it is not.
I remember as a kid I was really into fantasy things and my dad told me about LOTR and thought I’d like it. I’d read the hobbit for school already and really enjoyed that… But LOTR was painful, I didn’t even complete the first book
I would probably say that FOTR is my least favourite of the LOTR trilogy, TTT and ROTK are both more enjoyable IMO.
That said, I saw the movies before I read the books, so that might be a factor, I’m not sure.
Personally, my favorite book of his is the Silmarillion, he’s in his element and is writing a text book about cool fantasy stuff he dreamt up.
The Hobbit is far better than LotR. It’s no contest.
I enjoyed it a lot. The only parts that annoyed the hell out of me was the constant singing and the overly long ring council. The rest I have only fond memories of. Granted it was a long time ago.
The lack of interpersonal conflict in Star Treks overseen by Gene Roddenberry is a good thing. Humanity got their shit together, made Earth paradise, and went exploring the galaxy and other frontiers in life. Shoehorning conflict and darkness into the newer series destroys what made it unique.
Seen shows where the writers --as they recalled-- originally removeded about this. Made writing harder, since it was more difficult to write plots, but fuck that, it made them think outside the box, which made for some excellent episodes Re: grander ideas and nuanced takes on many subjects. Most, if not all, have come around to seeing Gene was definately ahea of his time and came to agree, too.
However DS9 was excellent, even though it diverged from Gene’s formula.
I feel that divergence is what made DS9 so good. Instead of travelling around exploring aliens, we’re stationary exploring ourselves and our politics. It was a great idea to make a show about a completely different aspect of Starfleet life. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the last great idea they had.
I couldn’t quite pinpoint what I didn’t like about the newer series, but you’ve nailed it - the hyper realistic tone it now has really clashes with the explorative nature of the old series.
There are some ways in which the newer shows like Discovery are realistic, but there are also ways in which they are stupid.
For example, two federation officers in a life or death situation where they have two minutes to solve an urgent crisis, and they decide to spend 60 seconds of that having an emotional heart-to-heart.
If that was in TNG, they’d have got the job done like professionals, and then had the friends chat later in ten forward. Because that’s how people with jobs get their jobs done.
TNG era was quite cheesy in some ways, but it kept characters real in that they always acted appropriately for their role and position, not just like a bunch of emotional oddballs who get to be in charge of a spaceship for some reason.
Discovery was trash. Lasted until season 2 but the plot holes and inconsistencies and bad writing was too much for me. Not to mention the 'member berries. And the key jangling, and tech ahead of its time breaking all manner of canon. Agreed the over emotional stuff came off as trite and out of place for what was essentially a space navy.
So, they can detect anomalies all over the milky way? In real time? Writers said that Klingons represented Trump supporters? Why? Or, with the baddies destroyed they didn’t have to travel in time. So why did they? Capital ships manoeuvring like borderline fighters? Plot contrivance from the writers? Okay. TNG or DS9 had their flaws but it was superior writing and seemed to be written for adults or did not insult its audience’s maturity, regardless of age. Discovery seems to have been written for kids or emotional teens. Lots of pew-pew action, too.
Well said. Discovery was more about individualism and the “rich tapestry” of family histories to show that these characters have inherited their greatness and that no one else is equipped to be in the singular intense situation they are now in.
TNG was more about the mission. Sometimes family history came into it, but most of the team was just doing the best they could given the circumstance and their characteristics were more quirks that helped the overall effort. At least that’s how it felt. Not one single character was more special than another.
No particular heroes, just professional heroics.
I’m playing Dragon’s Dogma II, taking the suspended tram into Bahkbattal or however you spell it. One of my pawns failed to make it into the basket before it started moving but they’re not a ranged fighter so they’re no use in driving off harpies anyways and I don’t bother turning back since I know from previous antics that they tend to find a way back to you.
A few minutes into the trip, dangling precariously in a rickety wooden contraption over a canyon, I hear the cry of a griffin. I spot it over the horizon, its eyes locked with mine. I am forced to watch helplessly as it approaches, drawing an arrow as if it could accomplish anything. The griffin slams into my tram, shattering it instantly and dropping the three of us to our doom.
That pawn that didn’t make it on the tram catches me in a bridal carry and sets me gently down on my feet, completely unharmed.
That’s why the game’s fast travel systems are made to discourage you from using them, because adventures don’t happen during loading screens.
So much this! It’s hard to argue against qol stuff, hard to explain why Dark Souls doesn’t need difficulty settings, new Zelda games degradation system is reasonable, RE games with no moving while shooting adds to the immersion, monsters in monster Hunter don’t need a health bar etc
some people think harry potter is actually well written, they probably think it, because they read it as a kid and it was one of their first books, but the writing is quite plump and the storytelling mid at best imo
It depends on the book, tbh. I’ve read them all as an adult and was surprised how the quality varied
