Lurker > LightningStrikes

Boris Johnson has resigned as an MP following the investigation into him holding parties during lockdown recommending he be suspended (which would have triggered a by-election he would lose). Yesterday was a good day unless you are a rightwing populist chancer with terrible hair.

On the twitter stuff I just want to say I feel really awful about the whole situation. Simply put capital cannot be expected to safeguard vulnerable people and not promote hate by itself. There needs to be regulation of these platforms, that is the only way forward.

First of all good, it shows the value of strong data protection legislation and international collaboration on that via the EU. Hopefully it will lead to better protections from surveillance for US citizens data as well as just the EU citizens data relevant to this case.

Secondly, since he wrote Metas response to this just your reminder that Nick Clegg is a traitor who sold out his voters and country for a whiff of power then pissed off to join one of the most evil corporations in existence.

I remember when KOS used to be a thing.

Grimlyn posted...

"a place belonging for all fans" just sounds like it's about catering to "get politics out of my games" maga chuds that dominate the game boards

Looking at the message board help topic, the only person celebrating is the one complaining about it being a far left echo chamber.

I would occasionally stick my head in there and it was mostly similar to the level of discussion you have here, progressive dominated and so on, with a few obvious trolls and problem users. I feel like this is a nuclear option because they didnt want to moderate it.

The Last Jedi got an A Cinemascore (joint best ever for the series), 5/5 from Comscore (best ever), 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, over an 80 on Metacritic, and made 1.3 billion dollars. Its not even divisive outside of specifically online nerd spaces. Other M, come on.

UltimaterializerX posted...

Im assuming the Star Wars board on here? Thats not indicative of the fanbase at large.

It absolutely is not, correct. I brought it up mainly to highlight the vocal fandom and how they diverge from the general audience. Like, all those movies prequel or sequel except for Rise of Skywalker got Cinenascores in the A- to A range and made a ton of money. Most people like most Star Wars films which is not the impression you get in online spaces.

And at that time everybody was complaining about Anakin and how Darth Vader was ruined. I was on the Star Wars board for a long time! Besides Luke was nobodys favourite character, actually a lot of the vocal types complaining about how he was ruined hated him!

Regardless the best Star Wars content isnt in the main trilogies anyway and has not been for years and years. Visions season 2 released today!

KamikazePotato posted...

I don't know how much this poll means, but either way I would've assumed Star Wars' peak was long gone. Disney sucked the magic out of that franchise.

The franchise is significantly more popular and getting a better overall audience reception now than it was from at least the 2000s.

I mean Disney as a company is terrible but their Star Wars content is better than a large majority of what came before. Lets not defend the sanctity of Ewoks Caravan of Courage now.

I am definitely viewing this as more of a change in how many is a few relative to your life, especially since the top two options have barely changed. As you get older not only does what constitutes having watched something a lot change, you also have less time to rewatch things. I know I have gone from rewatching things a lot to doing so very rarely.

I think a straightforward Pokmon movie adapting Red and Blue (or any mainline game really) could make that mind of money but thats a concept better suited for television.

Its basically the same argument Sony was trying to make about consoles applied to a market where Microsoft isnt a distant third. That is the difference, this would not be sufficiently damaging to the console business but cloud gaming is a different story because Microsoft has a much, much bigger market share there.

As for a secondary agenda I suspect it would simply be blocking a merger of this size. The CMA is more active than say the FTC and will intervene from time to time like when they blocked the Asda/Sainsburys merger a few years ago.

I feel like it has to be Drake. I knew there was someone I was forgetting. Snake didnt boost THAT much, it was just memorable to see the Noble Nine pecking order get up-ended like that after seeming to be in a groove for s while.

The rationale is not that Activision are a potential provider of cloud gaming being removed, but that Microsoft buying Activision will make them even more dominant in a space they already have a huge advantage in.

LiquidOshawott posted...

Who knew Stadia dying would probably end up hurting Microsoft more

Yep. Honestly its kind of a shame, I used Stadia a bit a couple of years ago and it was great. Just an example of having the tech down but completely bungling the business side.

Basically every other cloud gaming service provider is a joke compared to Microsoft already, and this would tip the balance even more in their favour. Also, it is very difficult to get started in that industry so its more prone to monopolies anyway. The argument is basically that as cloud gaming is a growing market in which Microsoft already has a huge advantage, giving them a further advantage would stop other services from coming up and prevent growth.

As for why the UK might be different (and IIRC the EU raised the same concerns) to the US regarding cloud gaming, this is just pure speculation but I guess the lack of data caps and mostly faster internet make cloud gaming a more serious proposal in Europe.

Wow, purely down to cloud gaming at that. Seems like it will completely reframe the debate around this.

Nobody does.

Also yeah Nate Silver is no good but 538 is a very useful tool so Im glad to see it stick around.

This makes me think, whats the biggest single boost a character has received? Zelda 2018 comes to mind, as does Gordon Freeman in 2005.

Yes.

Seize the means of production.

Just gonna let this topic go unfilled? How wude.

My favourite thing about Tulsi Gabbard was how wealthy right-wingers would be found to be donating to a bunch of extreme Republicans then would go Im not super right-wing I donate to Democrats too and it would be Tulsi Gabbard.

Baraggan
Death (Castlevania)

I mean, slightly more than half of critics liked Bullet Train. Personally I was in the middle of it. The early parts are a lot of fun but the third act derails (pun intended) into a CG mess.

Similarly most critics did give Mario a positive review.

Baraggan
Thanatos

Anyway having actually gone back and listened to the part of the podcast where he says it, it really is an offhand comment when talking about whether or not Hi-Fi Rush should have had a traditional marketing push rather than a shadowdrop and whether that would have helped. Thats it. Other websites just latched on to that part and took that as something that it never was.

Elsewhere being?

Yeah its Jeff Grubb, a very established journalist whos had many, many accurate scoops and has real sources. It was an offhand comment that isnt necessarily in conflict with Microsofts statement either.

I always liked Trusts. Opinions gonna opine.

If we treat FFXIV as a single player game the mechanics are the best in the series but it takes a while to reach that point. Trusts get good after a while but it is faster and more fun to do dungeons with a group.

Baraggan
Nito

Edit: Whoops, didnt realise that Baraggan was safe, change to Discworld Death.

Xeybozn posted...

So how long will it be until the GOP just starts openly advocating for a "final solution to the LGBT problem" or something equivalent? It really seems like they might get to that point before the end of the year.

Way too late for that, some Florida Republican was already openly talking about eradicating the LGBT community like a week ago.

XIII is weak for sure. Not sure if it belongs below 2 but yeah, its certainly the worst in the (numbered) series since the NES days. The only things it really had going for it are its soundtrack (no notes), the core battle system (wasted on poor encounter design), and the visuals at the time (now badly aged).

The story is terrible, the storytelling is even worse, the characters are unlikeable, almost all the battles are boring, the level design for the first 70% of it is some of the worst ever for a major game and even the more open parts arent that good. It is really carried by its aesthetics alone.

Also, as it was a story-focused game released in 2010 its probably fair to compare the writing to at least movies, and man. That is not a kind comparison for this game.

I will also join team liking the Dr Pershing episode a lot. It was a welcome change of pace, it built the world like Andor did (although the moment to moment writing in Andor is much better), and it felt like it was contributing to the overall Imperial Remnant story despite not having any of the main characters in it.

As for the season itself I didnt dislike it, actually I had a lot of fun with it. However, it was comfortably the weakest season and a lot of that is down to structural issues. Almost all of the narrative of this season is in the final two episodes. At the same it feels scattered so you dont get either enough of the adventure of the week feel or the serialised story feel and it just comes off as strange.

I dont think the issue is that Disney needs to hire a writer. Rather I think the issue is they have hired a writer and only one writer. Jon Favreau is writing every episode, almost entirely by himself. Occasionally Dave Filoni co-writes (and Noah Kloor for one episode) but the vast majority of the work is by Favreau. The simplicity of the writing really makes it seem like he spread himself too thin and they need more writers on the show.

I really dont want to be that negative though. These last two episodes were great!

https://apnews.com/article/twitter-elon-musk-transgender-deadnaming-hateful-conduct-ae1b7285bb906e04b26ff9751ec0c2ce

Twitter has removed its policy against misgendering and deadnaming trans people. Not unexpected but deeply worrying.

Boy isnt it great how one bigot can just buy a huge part of the worlds communications apparatus and use it to do whatever they want?

In all seriousness, they just spun off into their own games and there was not the same level of need to have them. Within the last ten years there is Gwent, though even that got its own game. Really fun though.

Yep!

Watching Iron Man 1 a year after it came out, post-hype and post-watching The Incredible Hulk as it played on TV first where I was it was pretty good but even as early as that I found it underwhelming relative to its early reception. I might be being too harsh to it, some day I will revisit it. However for now its around the middle of Phase 1 and comfortably below Iron Man 3 as those films go. I know many disagree!

That is an EXTREMELY unfortunate logo.

Oh Dunkey is here.

I would say its the other way around and aside from Phase 3 the MCU was more just hitting a baseline of okay to decent, which Phase 4 more or less also hit. Even Phase 2 was not that great. The third best Phase 2 movie is Ant-Man 1, a movie I really like, but is probably not as good as even the third best Phase 4 movie (Wakanda Forever). Phase 3 was a mix of a few lucky hits and building up to a huge climax that had never been done before. It was not the norm.

Of course the actual issue with Phase 4 was not the individual quality of projects. The issue was content barf, which they now seem to have a handle on.

Yeah but its a multiplayer game, those 60 million copies will get played by several people each and thats just one game in the series. My granddad played Mario Kart Wii once. This movie will sell about 100 million tickets. Thats a lot compared to one video game but not a lot compared to the whole franchise.

Ahh I thought Detective Pikachu was at 64% as well, my bad.

Paratroopa1 posted...

I feel like the biggest reason critics don't like this movie is that it's really made with fans of Mario in mind. There's a lot of stuff in this movie that isn't even really properly introduced, just assuming you are already acquainted with the world and the characters in it and their associated gags. I was thinking about the "blue shell" gag, for instance; if you've ever played Mario Kart, you get it, it's a funny little joke/reference. If you've never played Mario Kart, there is absolutely no context to that moment whatsoever, it's just a guy yelling "blue shell!" and attacking. It makes no sense. The movie is rife with that kind of stuff which has to make it a hard watch if you're not invested in the Mario universe. Similar movies don't really have this problem - Sonic 2 for instance has plenty of easter eggs and Sonic-related stuff in it but it tells a fairly traditional story that you don't really need to be previously invested in the universe to get. SMB really foregoes nearly all worldbuilding and normal storytelling in favor of just assuming that you already kind of get it.

Eh, Id say the vast majority of critics get those jokes, even the ones who barely play video games. Mario Kart 8 alone has sold over 60 million copies and has been played by many more a lot of whom will never own a Switch. Its a very broad appeal.

I still dont think the MCU has ever dipped below okay including the TV stuff, although I havent seen Quantumania yet and that sounds like it could be the one to do it. Then again I thought the same of Thor 4 and while I didnt like it I really dont feel mad about it at all. I was much more disappointed by Doctor Strange 2, which I liked but is easily the most disappointed Ive been with an MCU movie.

Unfortunately his son Lachlan Murdoch (who Kendall Roy from Succession is based on) is even worse than him so unfortunately I think were stuck with them for the time being.

Unsurprising but deeply disappointing. Murdoch is a poison to global democracy.

Very tonally inconsistent, jams two disparate storylines together, looks kind of bad because of overreliance on CG and lots of the jokes didnt hit.

I went with 6 but I didnt really dislike Thor. It was just kind of there. Really the actual issue was not not liking the films, but not really loving any of them except No Way Home.

Even Polyphony is only half in Japan these days though. Of course GT is also not what it was. Still big though.