Lurker > Lightning Strikes

There have been loads of polls showing that an overwhelming majority of GameFAQs play numerous new games per year, we can stop repeating that they don't now. Though that does make the site's obsession with the 90's even more alarming.

Also, on the subject of Indie poll strength changes Outer Wilds did much better on Disco Elysium than in the PC poll too. I can't help but wonder if in addition to Untitled Goose Game and Outer Wilds getting stronger, Disco Elysium got weaker because people don't think of Disco Elysium as an indie game. It is a shame because Disco Elysium seems like a much more logical third place than Untitled Goose Game... Though the actual third would be Sekiro.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

TMS and Warcraft III remasters seem interesting but really there is nothing must play until the duo of Doom and Animal Crossing in March.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

Legitimately surprised Untitled Goose Game is running away with this after how well Disco Elysium did in the PC poll. I guess it is more "indie" in a sense.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

Honestly behind only Breath of the Wild and Red Dead Redemption 2 in terms of open world design. I felt the story and progression left could have been better though.

Steiner posted...

i played 2 and the only sense of size i got was the size of the anime titties

The main XC games and X are very different, X is more of a true sandbox while those are more of a limited open world. 2's world gradually opens up as it goes and you get more of the sense of scale. It also improves dramatically and gets less booby, those first few hours have a lot to answer for.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

Bye Dan we'll miss you.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

Well this topic isn't full yet so I'll just say that I beat Control today and it was an excellent game as long as you weren't fighting hordes of regular enemies.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

It was also the first actually good year for mobile games since like 2014 as well, helped largely by Apple Arcade. Sayonara Wild Hearts and What the Golf are both legit.

Which makes it even more of a bummer that Mario Kart Tour, widely considered to be a bad game, is beating both of them on brand strength. It's going to make the final poll potentially having four games in it even more bizarre.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

Really I think it's time to retire system-specific polls and bring back the genre polls (though maybe tone the number of genres down a bit). System just does not matter anymore outside of Nintendo.

It will be funny if the GOTY poll is just Resident Evil 2, Fire Emblem, and Disco Elysium with no need to do a final poll though.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

Absolutely. Though at least 2016 was a big year for Pokmon.

I was curious so I had a look and the only games to reach top 3 in the past decade that aren't RPGs or third-person action adventures (most of which are basically RPGs) are Smash Bros Ultimate, Super Smash Bros. 4, Cuphead (by virtue of stronger exclusives knocking each other out) Bayonetta 2, Borderlands 2 (which is RPGish) and Super Mario Galaxy 2.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

That's a fiasco alright - weakest GOTY of the decade in strength, quality and general reception enabled pretty much because 2016 lacked big RPGs and Action Adventure games. To be really brutal about it it pretty much won through genre bias.

Anyway I do agree KH3 should have been in the PS4 poll specifically at the expense of CTR. It's a remaster, no need to have it. But I'm fine to drop a game that would probably come third for better games, yeah. There is merit in curating the options to cull lower quality games with more name recognition. I just don't think the CTR is the game to replace it and KH3 did still get good enough reviews so it had a fair reason to be there.

Also honestly Allen should have removed RE2 or just not done separate PS4 or Xbox polls, the only (timed) exclusive in either is Death Stranding.

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ninkendo posted...

Dan leaving would definitely explain the last year of his behavior. Video games just never seemed like a priority for him anymore.

I don't know about that he clearly still loves them but I think like Austin this was an opportunity he could not turn down.

Anyway Mario Party's on now. Smart money's on Abby - it is always hilarious how panicked Dan gets when he has to actually play somebody who enjoys the games.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

It is going to be weird not having Dan in a front-facing role for once. But what he is doing sounds like a way in to his dream so great for him.

It's wild to think of him leaving though. He even says in the Beastcast that whenever people predicted who might leave next he never once saw somebody guess him. That is definitely my experience as well.

I think Natalie would be a good shout, though literally the only hires people managed to guess were Dan and Jason haha. I also suspect we will be seeing a lot more Mike Mahardy in the immediate future.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

Oh fudge Dan's leaving!

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

Regarding Metacritic on the platforms Outer Wilds has a huge majority of its reviews on it has an 85 so above KH3. But more than that it and Control are getting lots of awards while Kingdom Hearts is getting nowt. I was very glad to see it there and not come last! I hope it wins the indie poll though I have a feeling Disco Elysium will top it. KH3 may have come third or even second on brand recognition, but honestly I'd rather celebrate lesser known quality games.

Also I don't think this is a weak year for the Switch at all I just don't think it has a massive standout. Every one of these seems of reasonable strength. And I would say the same of the year 2016 too.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

I feel if you didn't get off the starting planet you may as well have not played Outer Wilds since exploring the solar system is the game. You should definitely give it another shot.

It also just got GOTY from Edge and Eurogamer so I don't think this will be a Giant Bomb special like the last few years. This is their most traditional pick since Shadow of Mordor.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

No I'll be fair to LMS - the new Planet of the Apes trilogy is awesome and probably the correct answer.

Captain America is strong, but it depends on other films and I feel both has lower lows and lower highs than the Apes films.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

I watched this year's best of video and laughed like a lunatic the whole way through. No decline there that's for sure. However, it is no accident that 95% of the moments were either GB East or Jeff G.

I liked the GOTY content too. I just wish there was more of it.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

Last year was 10 yes. I like the recaps but cutting extra categories just seems excessive.

DeepsPraw posted...

With all the time saved with shorter podcasts, they surely have lots of fun holiday videos, right? Hitsmas? Rock Band? Winter Games?

Right?

They only had a week to do stuff. They got a lot more out than the last time it was like this (2015) at least! And yeah Winter Games is happening.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

The Fire Emblem dubstep moment was glorious, even if they sadly didn't play anything else from that game.

...Also this Later Alligator music is AMAZING!

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

I will say after listening to two and a bit days these discussions are absolutely not rehashes of the regular podcast discussions. You get a full on 35 minute Outer Wilds spoilercast, and I am very much looking forward to an hour of Death Stranding talk.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

I think what Outer Wilds has going for it is how intuitive the flowchart is for breadcrumbing you, not being excessively long, and the 22 minute loop making it easy to do one more go. It is quite accessible as a result.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

Two and a half glorious hours of Jeff ranking WWE2k20 faces.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

Should be Abby's too at least. I can't remember the last time a game got 4 number 1s. Previous winners I can remember:

Last of Us: 1 #1
Shadow of Mordor: 1 #1
Super Mario Maker: 2 #1s
Hitman: 0 #1s
PUBG: 2 # 1s
Tetris Effect: 0 #1s

I highly recommend listening to the Outer Wilds discussion if you're skipping the recaps it sounds like a winner.

I adore this game too. Glad that it looks like the clear winner here. I guess that's why the final day is so short lol.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

I always felt it was more about Elliott's mental space from the beginning BUT

Season 4 has probably the best hacker antics in the show, climaxing in episode 9. Once they had fully resolved that plot they moved on to dealing with the internal conflict. I felt they handled this shift much better than Lost, which just stops caring about the story at the end.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

Good thing the recaps are better than the categories then!

Don't believe me? Listen to the Kingdom Hearts III section it is glorious.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

It was fine with some highlights but flawed. Most of those flaws come from it feeling like they needed to A) invent large parts of this trilogy's plot, and B) remove random parts of The Last Jedi. This is basically a movie for people who hated The Last Jedi (for non-incel reasons), which is disappointing. TLJ was a bold step forward, this feels like Star Wars by numbers.

It was alright. But just alright.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

I'm so happy this film exists.

I really have to recommend the Guardian review which is written entirely in rhyme.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/cats_2019

Ah, the rare film where the reviews are more entertaining than the film.

RTE Ireland

First off, full disclosure - I am not a cat person. Second off - after watching this frankly mortifying film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, I'm not altogether sure I am a movie person anymore either.

Slant

This adaptation gets straight to the heart of the material, which is basically two hours of stray cats introducing themselves.

The Guardian

A purr-fectly dreadful hairball of woe. 1/5.

The Daily Telegraph

Glad to report that Cats is everything youd hoped for and more: a mesmerisingly ugly fiasco that makes you feel like your brain is being eaten by a parasite

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

TLJ was awesome and the radical change Star Wars needed. This sounds like an over-correction.

Regarding Chris Terrio, my understanding us that he came in late for rewrites on BvS and was only really involved in Batman's scenes. Justice League's on him though.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

It's directed by Greta Gerwig and is an awards contender. Simple.

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I liked it, fine sci-fi horror but inessential. The third best Alien film not counting Prometheus.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

Anybody who ran on a manifesto of removing the NHS would get annihilated. They'll just chip away at it slowly instead.

I think Boris is playing it safe there though. The left-leaning leavers who lent him their vote would not return otherwise.

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red sox 777 posted...

So what makes Corbyn unpopular as a personality? He doesn't seem like a great speaker, but then, neither is Boris Johnson (at least to my ears).

Constant media smears, staying too long, dodging the brexit issue, dodgy past associations.
HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

This one?

https://twitter.com/adampayne26/status/1205512933461155841?s=19

I dunno, if you ignore the first column including people who wouldn't have considered them anyways, 21% of voters that WOULD have voted for labour but defected specifically due to Brexit is still pretty dire.

That's the one! Just to be clear I'm saying the issue is Corbyn and brexit, not the economic policies.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

Outer Wilds hell yeah.

LM3 is really great, and seems to be doing very well with awards (it beat Smash Bris at TGAs!) though not as good as Fire Emblem. I never played 2.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

I can't find the graph but a study showed that a huge portion of what caused Labour voters to flip or not vote was the leadership, with brexit a distant second. Economic issues barely registered. The problem isn't the left, but Corbyn as a personality. That is very stupid but here we are. And trust me, a return to Blairism would not go down well in the places they struggled.

Looks like the early favourites to succeed him are Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey. The former is good, super popular and media friendly, relatively Corbyn-free but could be seen as a metropolitan remain candidate. The latter is perfect for the northern and working class vote (being both) and is fairly brexit neutral but may be tainted by her close ties to Corbyn. Not sure who the better choice is.

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Steiner posted...

the only positive result of this election although the strengthening of SNP scares me a lot

Dodds out in Belfast was great, but Sinn Fin are terrible too... also the Tories losing Richmond Park to the Lib Dems but that was obvious.

The secret story of this election is the death of the union. A majority of Northern Irish seats were nationalist for the first time ever. Scotland had a nationalist landslide. Clear mandates for independence referendums at least if coupled with nationalist majorities at their devolved elections which looks likely. They are leaving at this rate.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson loses seat to the SNP.

Honestly, good, she pulled the party to the right and is a big part of the infighting among the progressive parties. And most importantly she caused a lot of misery in coalition with the Tories.

LordoftheMorons posted...

Corbyn is out:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/socialist-jeremy-corbyn-steps-down-leader-labour-party-after-crushing-n1101166

Corbyn might hold on for a bit but he will leave soon. Not stepping down immediately but definitely very soon. He won his seat easily just to be clear!

Pokewars posted...

Nobody should be rooting for a garbage human like Corbyn who idolized Hugo fucking Chavez.

Well this is just nonsense.

And now I can sleep.

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Corrik7 posted...

I am confused of who you are rooting for.

Obviously Labour but I was just stating facts. Conservatives gaining working class seats and losing rich ones. A major shift and a bit worrying - Turkeys should not vote for Christmas either way frankly.

Anyway, Nigel Dodds the deputy and Westminster leader of the DUP lost his seat to Sinn Fin, the first time North Belfast has ever gone nationalist. The DUP are screwed.

Edit: Whoops forgot about cultural differences...

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

If Labour fully backed leave they would get destroyed in the cities. Full remain and what we see gets worse. They were screwed. They never should have backed the election, they should have just gotten a referendum through the commons without.

Anyway, let's talk Northern Ireland. The main parties are the extreme unionist DUP (10 seats last time), extreme nationalist and abstentionist Sinn Fin (7 seats last time), both eurosceptic (though SF backed remain due to border issues), moderate unionist and brexit-neutral UUP (1 independent seat last time, who stood down which looked like it would mean the seat would go DUP), moderate nationalist SDLP (0 seats last time) and neutral Alliance (0 seats last time) both of whom are pro-EU. Alliance unexpectedly gained the former UUP/independent seat North Down instead of the DUP and it looks like SDLP have beaten the DUP in Belfast South. So it looks like the pro-EU moderates are back in Northern Ireland, and the nationalists may end up stronger than the unionists for the first time.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

Labour just gained Putney. They list Workington and Darlington but gained a remsiny southern seat. Mad.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

To be specific he was talkinv aboyt scrapping the TV licence where they get most of their funds. That would be devastating.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk

Live results for sadists. Currently Lab 2 Con 1 but one of those Con seats is gaining Blyth Valley, a former strong Labour seat.

Anagram posted...

Can Scotland even hold another vote for independence after the previous one failed only a few years ago?

Yes. The debate is if it needs to go through Westminster. But with this result the SNP have a massive mandate, and they will repeat that in the Scottish Parliament elections in 17 months' time. Boris says he will not but that can't last long.

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TheRock1525 posted...

I mean the quality has already degraded where she almost died the last time she was in a hospital.

Yep austerity is a disaster and has killed a lot of people. Abhorrent.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

He also reformed it and led it to its best result in a long time. He only didn't become PM in 2017 because the SNP collapsed. But he stayed too long. Sadly people matter more than policies.

On the topic of independence, Scotland will get it with that SNP result. Northern Ireland could be tricky, let's see how the results there go. The DUP (unionists) really mucked up backing brexit and supporting the Tories.

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TheRock1525 posted...

Friend of mine said a kidney transplant will cost her 400k now if they continue moving away from NHS.

This will never happen.

It means the quality will get a lot worse though, with longer waiting times and fewer doctors.

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Anagram posted...

I haven't followed at all. Was there a big victory for the right and Brexit?

Brexit but not really the right. Tories promised a lot of spending to win over left-leaning brexiters.

Want to know something hilarious? It looks like Labour will gain The City, which has been Tory forever. Bankers prefer socialism to brexit.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

Steiner posted...

what's the third option?

Keir Starmer probably. Left but not a Corbynista, remainer, charismatic.

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

Is Corbyn's platform specifically unpopular or just the man himself?

The man himself. His policies poll VERY well which is infuriating.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

I hope Labour doesn't take this as a call to go to the centre after 2017. But it can't be a Corbyn disciple either.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

Exit poll out:

CON 368
LAB 191
LIB DEM 13
SNP 55
GREEN 1
BXP 0
OTHER 22

Crap. Screw this. Could change a lot but we are doomed.

Here's Sky's election broadcast: https://youtu.be/9Auq9mYxFEE

Live results will follow.

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Blaaaaaaargh Advokaiser

The containment topic is just going to be rammed with impeachment posts so let's do this here.

Polls everywhere from hung parliament to comfortable Tory majority, saying small majority most likely but could be anything. Exit polls in less than 10 minutes.

The parties:

Conservative: Centre Right, single issue campaign on passing their brexit deal.
Labour: Centre Left, want renationalisation of key industries, undoing austerity, free broadband and tuition; four day week, massive green investment. Want a new brexit referendum with their deal vs. remain.
Liberal Democrats: Centre, pro-European focusing on cancelling brexit all together if in a majority or through a referendum otherwise and decriminalising drugs as well as funding public services through a 1% tax rise for all.
SNP: Scottish nationalists, pro-European and want to remain via referendum. Like Labour but want Scottish independence.
Plaid Cymru: Similar, but Welsh.
Greens: Environmentalists, want to remain via referendum.
Brexit party: Single issue leave party.

Will update with the Northern Irish parties as they become relevant.

I for one am extremely anxious.

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