Lurker > Lightning Strikes

mnkboy907 posted...

Based on the way I think you're reading it, I'm not sure how you're including Ant-Man as a possibility but also discounting the first Captain America, Avengers, Guardians, or Spider-Man.

Some people consider Ant-Man and the Wasp different from Ant-Man because it has two leads in the title. Not me!

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The Last of Us Part II

Because it needs it!

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Unless Im really misreading it, it can only be Ant-Man, Black Panther, or Doctor Strange because of the first perhaps only comment, and Id be shocked if it was either of the last two so soon.

Im here for everyone going damn I ranked Age of Ultron too high, because in retrospect that is absolutely one of the weakest MCU films and if its higher than Cap 1 I may cry.

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Which of course is not even in the same ballpark as what Brie Larson said! Boy its almost as if shes a totally fine and reasonable person who gets hate from online weirdos for one very obvious reason!

Okay, obvious bait aside, Captain Marvel is a little better than fine. It is somewhat interesting in that it is just an edit away from being a standard Phase 1 style Marvel origin story, but they make some really smart decisions to bring it above that level. The structure is a bold choice and mostly works. There is also a great use of Ben Mendelsohn in a way that really makes sense if you know the directors. Overall I liked it a good bit, and if it had come out in 2010 wed have all been totally blown away. Its low ranking is mainly a factor of Phase 3 just being really, really great.

In retrospect, I did it a small disservice in my non-submitted ranking. I should have put it above Age of Ultron and frankly Im disappointed that thats not next!

Sadly it seems like its Ant-Man, despite part of what impresses me so much about Ant-Man being how much better it was than the giant film that had released just three months before!

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Ill stick to the last decade:

Deus Ex Human Revolution
Skyrim
XCOM&XCOM 2
Hotline Miami
Tomb Raider&Rise of the Tomb Raider
The Stanley Parable
Papers, Please & Return of the Obra Dinn
Both main recent Wolfenstein games (The New Order and The New Colossus)
Shadow of Mordor
Alien: Isolation
Both Ori games
Cities Skylines
The Witcher 3
Metal Gear Solid V
Undertale
Superhot
DOOM
INSIDE
Titanfall 2
Nier Automata
Cuphead
Celeste
Into the Breach
Red Dead Redemption 2
Outer Wilds

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Speaking of wild things in America that dont happen in most countries, being fired for organising, WTF?

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No nordic countries have the minimum wage, because they dont need it. The social safety net and public services are so good it was never a necessity.

But that (+UBI) only works if you have those strong benefits systems and strong public services (including affordable/public housing). You cant replace those with just UBI, though it can be a good supplement.

Though also, if you did reach a point where the minimum wage was no longer necessary, what good would it do to remove it? None, because while people would not go into poverty, you would just increase inequality by making the lowest paid poorer and potentially the richest richer. And everybody benefits from greater equality in the long run.

All this is to say that yes, the minimum wage is only really needed to prop up neoliberalism, but if you already have it getting rid of it would only make things worse no matter what.

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Murphiroth posted...

Cool reveal but I hope the good Quicksilver shows up and they drop the shitty Foxsilver.

Nuclear level take

...Also, this show is amazing.

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It kind of is when you consider that that is literally the dominant train of thought in America still. Decades of brainwashing that all policies short of absolute neoliberalism are communist. Its the exact opposite of what the communists did in Weimar Germany, where they accused the social democrats of being social fascists - except this time if youre not all the way to the right economically, youre a commie.

Luckily this attitude has been changing a lot recently, and you can see it in both polls and in the discourse online. This is actually one good thing the internet has done for politics, and I think Bernie deserves a lot of credit as well for normalising social democratic policies.

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Origami King great game

...Also Doom Eternal.

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Perhaps if the US actually had proper social housing this wouldnt be an issue!

There is an incredible model of how housing should work in Singapore.

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Snake5555555555 posted...

Obadiah Stane is a pretty good villain to me since I feel like they didn't waste a great casting like they did with Hugo Weaving or Mads Mikkelsen. The performance was exactly what I expected from Jeff Bridges. Also admittedly I just love the BOX OF SCRAPS line.

I dont think either of those were wasted casting! Mads in particular is why Kaecilius works. He brings a real charm to a relatively uninteresting role.

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DoomTheGyarados posted...

I wonder if people realize they have these things elsewhere and it went well lol

Irelands minimum wage isnt as good as the proposed US one, but its nearly double the current amount! All that corporate flight will be disappointed.


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Im pretty sure Im the only Irish resident here, and I can say with some confident that if they think a slight increase in regulations in the US is too much, they wont like being in Ireland or the EU at all. You come to Ireland for single market access, not because Americas too left wing. And thats not even getting into the housing crisis. Ireland is very expensive these days.

Of course, again the actual solution is A) global cooperation, and B) making it harder for companies to do so.

I feel like masterplum is really on the cusp of realising some fundamental truths about capitalism, but isnt quite there yet.

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RIP Thor, though its good to see that most of the writeups are positive. I love that they got Kenneth Branagh to direct, I think his absence is a big part of why The Dark World didnt work. They really get the tone right, and its the point where the overarching story actually starts to feel like its developing, which Iron Man 2 didnt really manage. Loki is a great villain, and all the characters are likeable. It also has that really amazing shot of Thor screaming into the air transitioning into Heimdall looking out into space, which always gets me. Really good fun, even though it still barely escapes the bottom 5 for me because the rest are just better.

Anyway, its almost certainly Captain Marvel next, which Id place beneath Thor, and maybe its tied with Age of Ultron or an Ant-Man?

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As one last thing, you know that when people in power suggest policies like these, they arent trying to destroy capitalism, but rather make it sustainable right? A free market system will inevitably destroy itself, you just need to look at the climate crisis to see that. Leaving it unregulated without a proper safety net is also a good way to get both fascism and communism, as we have seen many times. If you actually want the market and liberal society to survive you need to take these actions, and they need to come from government, because profit will always trump sense for businesses.

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Youre right, it was a bad decision.

They should have taken energy entirely back into public control! There shouldnt be a market on essential utilities. And indeed there was not for a very, very long time, and is not in many capitalist nations. Its also something that will happen in countries like the UK eventually because public support is there. With rail renationalisation effectively happening its the next step.

I look forward to you calling the UK a communist state!

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A concept so communist that Nixon did it! And its common throughout the world across the ideological spectrum.

Besides, a price freeze would clearly be targeted eg energy, telecoms, etc. at things that have the most appreciable impact on cost of living. But the notion that prices for essential goods and services need to be high to price certain people out is hilariously dystopian.

Theres nothing especially communist about it by the way. Its not even socialist. Its a standard social democratic policy, ie government regulation of a capitalist market to help people. The communist attack line is just something that rightwingers say to try to make every moderate proposal taboo, like the way Biden was smeared at the 2020 election.

Theres actually a great example of this very thing from the UK - Ed Miliband proposed a modest energy price freeze in his 2015 manifesto, got smeared as a mad marxist for it by the Tories, then just over one year later what did the Tory government do? Freeze energy prices. Which, at least, gave us this amazing tweet:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Ed_Miliband/status/783598959222718464

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You may actually need to define that, because my understanding is that that phrase has very different definitions between our countries and that affects what I say back!

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Let me tell you

About a little concept

Called price freezes

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I went with Ratchet and Clank. I think icon makes a very good point, we have next gen mechanics with Astro and next gen visuals with Demon's Souls, but nothing has brought them together yet - it looks like Ratchet is the first game that will take advantage of both.

I wonder how a topic series which asked this question for previous generations would go. I might do that, the only thing holding me back is that I have no idea what to do with the Dreamcast!

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When you don't have constructive policies, you need an enemy to fight against.

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Oh yeah, I meant to make a topic when the trailer dropped, looks great, and the first part us out???? Ill get to it if only to see if Kojima actually appears.

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Pity vote for Paper Mario

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Iron Man 3 is great though

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Ooh, that sounds like Captain Marvel to me. If its Thor I get it but youre wrong, and I really hope its not Ant-Man.

Anyway, no surprises about Iron Man 2, I think everyone knew that this would be the bottom 3.

I have very little to say about this one. Its... alright. It has this paradoxical thing where it feels both like filler and trying to do far too much to set up The Avengers at the expense of its own plot. And a lot of that set up gets thrown out leaving it strangely skippable despite having a lot of important first appearances. Its not bad, but its just okay.

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Sonny Burch is weird because hes not really the villain of that film, Ghost suits that role much better. I barely even regard him as a villain, so if youre below Sonny Burch, something went wrong.

Villains I kind of like starts at 14 and actual good villains starts at 8.

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GuessMyUserName posted...

i still don't even know what ps4/bone gen is like

What it always promised to be: 2010s PC games on medium settings!

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FBike1 posted...

Yep. The new generation isn't real until we get a new Final Fantasy.

I feel like this statement literally only applies to the PS2, and even that is debatable as Gran Turismo 3, DMC, GTA3, and MGS2 were all already out.

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

People are definitely too hard on these. They are mediocre Fire Emblem games, sure, but that still means they are better than most games. What's their competition on the 3DS for a tactics RPG outside the franchise? Fucking Project Steam?

Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars, the only good 3DS launch game that wasnt a port. It was the return of XCOM before XCOM actually returned. Its still a launch game, but the best turn based strategy youll get from that (pre-XCOM Enemy Unknown, pre-Fire Emblem Awakening) era.

Anyway, Fates is fine. Definitely learned the wrong lessons from Awakening, though the howling outrage it got from the most dedicated fans was entirely unearned.

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Fall Guys

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Next gen meaning a clear generational step, not just a small increment over the last generation, but Ill leave how to define that up to you!

Its a silly question of course but it got posed on the Beastcast and I dont think theres a clear consensus as to this. Lets see!

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CoolCly posted...

Oh no, this movie is even worse than we all thought possible

From one of the UKs oldest political magazines:

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/11/hollywoods-rubbish-tube-geography-thor-2-unnecessary-distraction

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Lol since it doesnt matter and I am not in this project, heres my ranking, spoiler tagged as not to distract, from bottom to top:

23 - The Incredible Hulk 22 - Thor: The Dark World 21 - Iron Man 2 20 - Avengers: Age of Ultron 19 - Captain Marvel 18 - Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 17 - Thor 16 - Ant-Man and the Wasp 15 - Ant-Man
14 - Iron Man
13 - Captain America: The First Avenger
12 - Iron Man 3
11 - Spider-Man Far From Home
10 - Thor Ragnarok
9 - Spider-Man Homecoming
8 - Doctor Strange
7 - The Avengers
6 - Black Panther
5 - Captain America: The Winter Soldier
4 - Captain America: Civil War
3 - Avengers: Infinity War
2 - Guardians of the Galaxy
1 - Avengers: Endgame

So now I can compare my list! Also I think all these films are at least okay!

I didnt know there was a limit to the number of spoiler blocks you can have so forgive my formatting lol


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Yeah, Ill agree with that. Phase 1 was bringing together a lot of movies that were going to get made either way and as a result had some pretty different visions behind them, hence, all the differing tones. Thor for instance, had been in the works in some way for 20 years before it came out. Then like you say, off the back of The Avengers and the Iron Man films they were going for a more joke-filled lighthearted action tone before diversifying again around Civil War. This worked pretty well for some, but for others you could feel that clash of tones.

I will say though, there is one film from Phase 1 other than those two that I think stands out, and thats Captain America The First Avenger. Great film, great style, and it gave Markus and McFeely, the writers of most of the key films in the Infinity Saga, their start.

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Thor 1 is really good! It doesnt deserve to be next. I would guess Iron Man 2, that and Thor 2 are a real coin flip for me.

So, The Dark World. I do not hate it. I think it sets up the overarching Infinity Stones plot pretty well. Some of the humour lands. I think the Thor/Loki scenes are pretty good, and I like the last action scene. All this makes it a passable, even decent experience. It has more good stuff in it than either The Incredible Hulk or Iron Man 2.

However, it has major flaws that are worse than either of those also. The tone is all over the place, and this is the result of considerable reshoots to add more humour. Before the reshoots, the film had a much more serious tone more in line with the Shakespearean style of the first Thor. It is easy to see the scenes that developed Malekith going as a result of this too. Speaking of which, what a waste of Christopher Eccleston. If you know him, you know that he doesnt like prosthetic, stunt, and CGI heavy roles, and he said he did the role because he was drawn to his character in the script. To see that stuff get cut out is a real shame.

Also, theres a scene where Thor asks how to get to Greenwich from Charing Cross on the Underground and the directions are totally wrong! This sounds silly but is something they should have caught, according to an interview with him Tom Hiddleston caught this, tried and failed to intervene, then at the premiere (which was in London) the audience groaned at that scene. Having seen this film in London... it was a common opinion. Londoners actually care about this stuff! Its genuinely a big part of the citys culture so they did their location dirty there.

You actually get to Greenwich from Charing Cross by changing at Waterloo, getting the Jubilee line to Canary Wharf, then the DLR to Greenwich, by the way.

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Remember that the leak happened days before that match! However, TLoU still came out looking pretty good. The xstats against Skyrim wound up looking remarkably similar to 2015 - but if my maths are correct, before that it actually overperformed a good bit relative to VLR and slightly on Arkham City. So who knows, also lol xstats.

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The well, people were also biased in favour of defending it argument gets made every time theres a controversy and every time theres a genuine complaint those people cease to exist when the game actually comes out. Just look at the amazing swing in reactions to Gamespots 7/10 Cyberpunk review. If the points against TLoUII were valid, more people who played it would have come away with the issues that were causing the fuss.

I followed the leaks, and they wound up being entirely misrepresentative of the content of the game. Real content, but misunderstood. I have encountered people who played TLOUII and didnt like it, but not for the reasons that caused the controversy. Because most of them werent even accurate!

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Also I outright didnt want FFXVI before they finished VII Remake and gave XIV some more time, but XVI looks great. Every other FF since X has had caveats attached from its announcement, this is the one Im fully optimistic about.

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LinkMarioSamus posted...

Cyberpunk is much more this site's kind of game than The Last of Us.

A little, but this site does really like the first TLoU, more than Uncharted, probably because its more of a narrative driven adventure. Additionally, Cyberpunk is much more like Deus Ex than it is something like Fallout or The Witcher 3. One thing that got lost in that games trainwreck of a launch is a third of the playerbase disappointed that it wasnt Cyberpunk Witcher, a third of the playerbase disappointed it wasnt Cyberpunk GTA, and a third who liked their open world Deus Ex.

All of this is not to say that TLOUII is a flawless game that people will love as soon as they play it. For instance, I really like that game, and the last chapter was a mistake. Its enough to send it from way better than the first game to below it in my eyes. It definitely wouldnt be its equal. However, the bulk of the pushback was to do with factors outside the game that will be forgotten, whereas with Cyberpunk it was mostly the games fault. This is why I feel TLoUII has a much better chance of improving its reputation than Cyberpunk. If people are still on about TLoUII in ten years, that says more about the people than the game.

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I gotta say, Im sad I missed this, it would have been fun.

Well I 100% agree with the list so far! The good thing about The Incredible Hulk is that it sets a solid baseline, and frankly coming from the Ang Lee Hulk movie, I was happy to take something unremarkable but sufficient.

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Fall Guys

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Super Meat Boy was a big hit on the Switch, to the point where Nintendo got the marketing rights for Forever. That is the whole thing about the Switch, it gave old indie games a second life, some were reporting their best ever years years after release because of the Switch. But I think were getting off topic - regardless of which is stronger between Ys VIII and Super Meat Boy, Forza Horizon 4 would beat both of them!

Oh, and I wasnt really doing it based on strength.

Anyway, you cant compare TLoU to Cyberpunk. One was misleading leaks making manbabies upset, the other was a game so broken it was removed from sale. Nobody will remember the TLoU leak in 10 years time, but Cyberpunks launch will always be part of its story. Now if theres a sequel that doesnt suffer a similar fate, I can see that.

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Indie-developed retro-styled sidescrolling platformers that hit it big on the Switch? No overlap there.

But more on topic, I feel confident that Super Meat Boy Forever will not make GOTD3.

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Super Meat Boy was definitely SFF'd though, which is my main argument against Ys VIII. It's the only way that result makes sense.

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I think Forza Horizon 4 would be surprisingly not terrible. I mean, it wouldn't reasonably win a match, but I'd take it over Ys VIII any day. The weakest of those is easily Titanfall 2, it's just good.

Anyway, back to 2030, I think that Ghost of Tsushima has a big advantage even if there are sequels as the start of a franchise. I also wouldn't necessarily assume that its sequels would replace it.

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Axl_Rose_85 posted...

I'm pretty sure Skyward Sword and 3D World will decimate half the field in GotD2 which quite frankly speaks more about the bracket than their strength. Regardless it would have been way more interesting to see something like FFXV vs Skyward Sword or 3D World vs Bayonetta 2 than literally everything with so much as a slight name recognition breaking 80% in Round 1.

I definitely do not think this would happen as neither of those hypotheticals would be close, or is it what happened. Compare the two Dragon Age entrants between GOTD1 and GOTD2 and how they did in round 1!

3D World definitely should have been in it, and Far Cry 3 is an interesting call. Theres solid arguments for Uncharted 3 and Skyward Sword, but also arguments against. I think Id rather better bracket placement for Uncharted 4, the vastly better game, than Uncharted 3 being in it! And we all knew GoW3 would not make it the second the 2018 game came out. The way I see it 3D World is THE snub and the rest are hm, theres an argument for it.

If were actually relitigating the GOTD2 I would replace these games:

Trails in the Sky SC
The Talos Pinciple
Ys VIII
Slay the Spire
Dying Light
Destiny
Heavy Rain
Crypt of the NecroDancer

With these games:

Super Mario 3D World
Skyward Sword
Uncharted 3
Forza Horizon 4
Titanfall 2 or Far Cry 3
The Witcher 2
LA Noire
Dark Souls 2

Then call it, and frankly only 3D World is essential. I also really think LA Noire should have replaced Heavy Rain but whatever. Also if youre looking at that list and going Forza Horizon 4, what? it is right behind 3D World and Skyward Sword in the rankings of best reviewed snubs, and had a surprisingly good GOTY performance. It beat Monster Hunter World! 3 did pretty alright as well. And of course, the Forza franchise is now the premier realistic racing franchise while the Horizon subseries is arcadey enough for GameFAQs to like it. Thats the top snub you never thought of for sure.


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Thats not true though. The indie games that made GOTD2 were either the big names or extremely well received. If anything thats sn argument against Cyberpunk - it will be left behind for frankly, better games.

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Some were either relatively minor (VVVVVV, Heavy Rain) or of their era (Black Ops, Halo Reach) as well.

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I suppose the main debate about Warzone is if it actually counts as a game! Also I forgot about Half-Life Alyx

Heres s thought as a smaller passion entrant: Kentucky Route Zero

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