Lurker > ParanoidObsessive

The Wave Master posted...

He said he didn't care that Xavier was an old white guy, and that he was willing to wear make up to become an old white Professor X.

So is it time for the obligatory joke about why Michael Jackson shouldn't be allowed to play a character who runs a school for youths?



The Wave Master posted...

Did we agree on a topic title yet?

Do we ever agree on a title? We all usually just throw out dozens of possible options individually and then leave you to sort through them and pick one.

Though if you're still soliciting opinions, we could always combine it with the above and call it "Wave Master's School for Geeky Youngsters".
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

The Wave Master posted...

and I'm not paying the hundreds of bucks collectors want for the two of them, and I've sadly given up on ever having them.

I'd love to have the Funko Pop Cortana that came out as a tie-in to Halo 4, but I don't think I've ever seen it selling for less than $200 on Amazon, and I don't want it that much.

Worse when, at this point, any Funko Pops you see on sites like Amazon aren't even "new" as much as they are "collectible" or "used", and I don't necessarily want anything so badly that I'm willing to buy one someone else has been doing God knows what with.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Korruptor posted...

I was expecting genetically engineered cats that act like dogs but that is insane though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ld-twoeg2s
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Entity13 posted...

That explains 2020 pretty much. Thanks, PO.

No, I'm pretty sure that's the work of my Chaos Engine. I finally got it running a few years back, and it's been slowly pumping more and more entropy into the universe at an exponential rate.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

WhiskeyDisk posted...

Guess I should toss all my Arthur C. Clarke books too since they weren't written yesterday.

I just put in an Amazon order and bought some books for my mother that were published in the 1970s.

The fabric of the space-time continuum is unraveling as we speak.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

I_Abibde posted...

A minor moment of geekery for me: I backed the Kickstarter for Amiga Power, a two-disc set of remixes from the titular computer (and the underground magazine of the same game), and my physical copy arrived yesterday. Feels good to jam to those tracks.

I have almost no computer nostalgia - when I was a kid I never owned one (nor did my parents), in school we were mostly using Commodore PETs, and the only friend I had who owned a home computer had a TRS-80 (Tandy Radio Shack), and my one cousin owned an Apple IIe.

Ironically, in spite of the fact that I never had or knew anyone who had a Commodore 64, it's always the computer I sort of associate with that era of time.

It wasn't until 386 PCs started becoming common that I really started interacting with them (and Macs), so the first real old-timey nostalgia I have for computers kind of goes back to that period (and telnetting to the local BBS to download pirated adventure games). I'm not 100% sure, but the first PC game I ever played might be Zork.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Assuming you mean Red vs Blue by Rooster Teeth, they're very good. If you like that sort of thing.

It's sad that the series has kind of gone to shit lately, but they did manage to squeeze about a dozen really good seasons out of it for more than a decade.

Also, if you do wind up liking it, and if you like anime, you can look into RWBY as well (both RvB and RWBY are also free on YouTube, so you can watch every episode without having to track them down on DVDs).
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Metalsonic66 posted...

There have been a shit ton of previews talking about the basics of the story if that's what you want to know. I'm planning to go in blind in that regard though.

I'm aware. I'm also aware that I could probably get a plot summary or the like from Wikipedia.

But my point is more that I have yet to see a single commercial for the game that tells you anything meaningful about it. And whenever people are all WOMGSOHYPE! over it they literally never describe anything about the game. Basically, I haven't been given a single reason to even remotely give a shit about the game to the point where I would feel the need to go actively looking for information about it. They've done precisely nothing to make me WANT to know what it's about, so I'm mainly just apathetic about it.

It almost feels like the entire marketing campaign has been little more than "Hey look, Weebs - you can be a samurai! Okay, go preorder now."

And while 20-year old me might have been "Okay, fucking sold", 43-year old me is more like "Yawn."



Zeus posted...

What about a live-action Last Unicorn? >_>

I never really got into Last Unicorn all that much. It should theoretically fall into my wheelhouse, but it never really appealed. It might be because young me assumed unicorns were for girls and thus it was worthless, or maybe it just ever-so-slightly predated my time so I couldn't get into the more emotional parts or style, or any number of other possible reasons. But because I never had that love for it as a kid, I also lacked the nostalgia for it so it didn't do much for me as an adult, either.

I loved the shit out of Lord of the Rings, though, and that was 4 years earlier (though I obviously didn't see it on TV until years later). And I loved stuff like Labyrinth and Princess Bride, so it's hard for me to really put my finger on it.

(Tangentially, though, I will say I didn't really appreciate Ladyhawk, Dragonslayer, or Legend at the time either, so maybe I just had a certain antipathy towards certain types of fantasy. It's hard to really parse out when I'm looking backwards from 30+ years later and trying to remember how I felt about stuff, and why.)



Zeus posted...

Then there's kinda the sub-issue where SR1 only has a male character.

To be fair, they actually kind of address that in-game. The explosion at the end of the game puts you in a coma, and you required reconstructive surgery to fix everything, which justifies why you might look different than you did in SR1. Which includes gender (which seems more fluid in the Saints Row universe at the best of times).

Like most things with the Saints Row games, the real answer is "Don't think about it too hard, this shit's mostly satire anyway." Rule of Funny and Rule of Cool trump any sane and rational backstory or (see also the magical plastic surgery you can have in SR3 and SR4, where you become a perfect copy of Cyrus... or can make yourself look like a giant grape person, or a dinosaur).

But SR2 basically winks at the whole idea that you can be radically different (even a different gender, accent, etc) from the version of yourself in SR1 with the occasional "You look different. Did you change your hair?" jokes. And SR4 gets even more meta with it when you're fighting the SR1 and SR2 player models as glitches that look nothing like you because they're the default versions (something you openly mention in-character, including when the SR2 co-op player shows up).

And really, once the game lets you play as a female, you can always sort of retcon it in your own head that you were always a woman, even in the first game. The flashbacks in SR4 sort of support that idea anyway.



Zeus posted...

Of course, there's also the general issue of the fact it was *only* ever on the 360. (Granted, I own a 360 so, in theory, that's not a gamebreaker... although the 360's tendency to break games is. Plus I just don't like the 360 very much.)

360 was easily my favorite console of all time when it was current, and even today makes a very good run for being #1 in my eyes (the PS4 is definitely superior in some ways, but there are still aspects of the 360 I prefer). It would have been nice to get a 360 with the processing power and game library of the PS4 this gen - I would have bought one without hesitation.

It's a shame Microsoft decided they wanted the Xbone to be hot liquid feces instead, so I had no choice but to give up on the Xbox this go around (and will be extremely wary and likely uninterested next time around as well). Nearing the end of this gen, I've never once regretted not having the Bone (Halo might have been able to sway me, if not for the fact that 343 shit the bed so hard and now the franchise is pretty much dead to me anyway).



Zeus posted...

Speaking of, when I was watching cutscenes from SR2 (since I don't feel like getting my ps3 going), I glanced at some wikis and learned that Shaundi was VA'd by Eliza Dushku, which seemed pretty crazy considering she... oh wait, I guess her career *was* fading at that point.

Weellll. If we're going to be honest, Eliza Dushku's career was ever all that (what's the opposite of "faded"? Bright?) in the first place.

But she was recording her lines for SR2 right between Tru Calling and Dollhouse, which is probably the period where she was the most relevant she ever was, even if most nerds today would argue that she peaked with Buffy and was never that good or significant again.



Zeus posted...

I learned that NPH VA'd, of all people, Veteran Child. Kind of a small thing to do, considering that Veteran Child doesn't have that many scenes.

Keep the time period in mind. Recording/development for SR2 almost certainly predated Dr. Horrible.

At that point in time, NPH wasn't really that big. Sure, he was on How I Met Your Mother (which went a very long way towards rehabilitating him) by that point, but before that most people just (barely) remembered him as that kid who was Doogie Howser once. Even in Starship Troopers (which was mostly ignored or hated at the time anyway), the general reaction was mostly "Hey, it's Doogie Howser!" It's why he was basically a joke in Harold & Kumar.

NPH didn't really become memetically popular until Dr. Horrible made him a nerd saint. At which point I'd definitely say he swung much higher than most of the rest of the people in the game.

In SR2's time frame, I'd easily say Eliza Dushku and even Keith David were much bigger gets than NPH was. I might even be willing to argue that Jay Mohr was still more significant than him at that point (though that was right before Jay Mohr took his own dive towards obscurity). Maybe even Michael Dorn (though he was more on the downslope himself by that point, and was mostly only geek-famous even when he was popular).

The real impressive thing was that NPH was willing to come BACK to voice lines for SR4 (though Eliza Dushku either wouldn't or wasn't even asked), after his personal stock had increased.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Metalsonic66 posted...

Open world samurai action

That tells me what it IS, but literally nothing concerning what it's about.

Unless you're suggesting that it isn't actually about anything. In which case I just ceased to care about it from now until the very end of time.



The Wave Master posted...

P.O. what kinds of games interest you, and what are you looking for in a game, and what do you actually hate? Because it seems like it's all very random what you love or hate in a particular game.

Not really, it's pretty easy to know what I'm into. And I've pointed it out constantly in various topics.

Basically, I like story/character-heavy games. When I'm playing RPGs, I prefer elaborate dialogue trees and branching narrative and don't really give much of a damn about things like optimal builds or (in fact, considering I play most RPGs on the lowest "narrative" difficulty setting available, the mechanical side of things usually barely impacts my awareness of gameplay at all as I just hack-and-slash my way directly through to the next story bit as quickly and easily as possible). I really like being able to create a character in the beginning - not just appearance, but some degree of personality/backstory (this is why I love Fallout: New Vegas so much while Fallout 3 and 4 leave me much colder). If a game has voiced dialogue, I like the ability to choose from at least a couple voice sets (or if I can't, I at least like the VA in question to not be total ass) - Saints Row was great for this (though a bit annoying because the female voice sets weren't entirely consistent across games).

I tend to like fantasy best, but I can adjust to fantasy-flavored sci-fi (like Mass Effect) or comic book action (like Batman or Spider-Man). I'm not really a fan of "modern" games (and even less so when they're presented in a bit of a pretentious "indie" style, a la stuff like Life is Strange), but other genres I can generally take or leave depending on how good the story is.

I hate frustration gaming (which is why Dark Souls and all the games influenced by it can fuck right off forever). I also tend to dislike platforming-style games (and have ever since they mostly moved out of 2D stuff like Super Mario World and into 3D). I'm mostly cold on fighting games these days, and online multiplayer is pretty much a dead issue for me (so things like online competitive FPSes or MMORPGs don't really interest me). I like FPSes (it might actually be my main favored genre in terms of gameplay/combat), but I'm less about FPS as a primary selling point (like in a Battle Royale-style game) and more in favor of it as a more fluid, natural way to play open-world sandbox-y exploration/narrative games (and I tend to like games that let you snap between first-person and third-person whenever you want, because I occasionally like going third-person to look at how awesome I am and while traveling from place-to-place, but dropping into first-person for combat and searching rooms for loot).

I tend to like "arcade-y" games more than "simulation" games - the more complicated game controls get, the less likely I am to care about a game (which is a shame, because I'd kind of like to play space exploration/combat games like Elite:Dangerous or EVE Online, but they tend to go way more sim-y when what I actually want is a new generation version of Wing Commander or the fighter level in Halo: Reach). That's part of what's kept me from playing RDR2 in spite of it being story-heavy - a lot of the fiddly simulation bullshit is more deterrent than appealing to me (RDR2's other major flaw for me being the fact that it is dead-set on telling the story IT wants to tell, with me having very little say in anything at all, while pretending that character decisions matter... and it's a story I'm not particularly interested in).

Once you keep that sort of thing in mind, you can get a pretty good feel for whether or not I'm going to enjoy any given game. Just see how many things I like the game has, then sort of subtract out the things I dislike. The balance of everything will generally indicate if I'm going to slaver over a game (fantasy FPS with RPG elements that has robust character creation and backstory options with branching narrative!) or if I'm going to loathe a game (a Dark Souls-style Roguelike with almost no story focusing on complex combat mechanics and synergistic builds, interspersed with complicated platforming sections - bleh!).

The real question might be whether or not a given story interests me - I'm not going to love every story-heavy game simply because it IS story-heavy. The story it's telling needs to appeal to me as well.

I really loved Tales from the Borderlands and the Minecraft: Story Mode games from Telltale (the Batman game was okay but not exciting, and The Walking Dead did nothing for me because I'm not really into that setting or style of story). I've actually been thinking about playing through them again at some point (though right now I'm playing Fallout 4 for no good reason, after I finally finished/Platinum'd Spider-Man). I might play Horizon: Zero Dawn again at some point, because I enjoyed that as well (though I might wait until next gen and play leading in to the inevitable sequel).

I'm not entirely keen on the cyberpunk aspects of Cyberpunk (ironic, I know!), but everything else about the game seems right in my wheelhouse. The same holds true for Bloodlines, because it's that style of game set in the World of Darkness (which I have extremely fond memories of - I basically spent like 15 straight years playing various games in that setting). In each case there are reasons why I'm cautiously optimistic rather than WOMG SO HYPED!, but both are games there's a very good chance I'm going to love when they eventually come out.

The only game that really doesn't fit in all of that is Minecraft. As a game with no story, you'd think I'd be bored of it. But the creativity of it appeals to me, because it's less like playing a game, and more like having a box of infinite Legos, where you come up with new and interesting things to build (it's more "digital facilitator" than "game" to me).



The Wave Master posted...

(Which Scarlet doesn't like at all. She also hates E T.)

I loathe ET. I saw it in a movie theater as a kid and just couldn't relate to it or get into it at all. At no point since then have I ever really been able to get into it. Even things that sort of "feel" like ET tend to turn me off immediately.

The only other really popular movie that people love and see as kind of iconic that I dislike as much as ET is Forrest Gump. I hated that movie.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

I'm still waiting for the inevitable Last Dragon and Big Trouble in Little China remakes. I may have to kill someone when those happen.

Either that, or I have to figure out the means by which a man can harpoon God, and take that motherfucker down.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

The Wave Master posted...

Has anyone here actually played Ghost of Tshushima? I'm going to wait for a price drop before a purchase, but I did want a second hand opinion from you Geeks.

I still have no real idea what the hell it's about.

At this point I'm probably waiting until Yahtzee does the most caustic review of the game possible so he can explain to me what it actually is, and then if it doesn't sound too terrible I might make more of an effort to actually look into it myself. Or I can proceed to ignore it forever if it turns out to be something I don't give a damn about.

I've pretty much stopped caring about every majorly overhyped game at this point, because almost none of them ever appeal to me. What the majority of gamers seem to want out of games and what I want out of games continues to be an ever-widening chasm.

Though I did just put in an order to Amazon and I bought Journey to the Savage Planet for the PS4 on a whim, so that may be my one concession to "modern" gaming for 2020. Depending on whether Bloodlines 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 even come out, or if they get delayed another year or two because of viral armageddon.



The Wave Master posted...

Tomorrow is the Xbox first party games showcase, and I'm not excited because it's Microsoft, and I'm not planning on purchasing Halo: Infinite

343 ran that franchise so hard into the ground it can currently see China.

I always find it amazing that I can go from absolutely loving a franchise to being absolutely apathetic about it. Whether it's going from buying every Halo game (and playing the shit out of them) and all of the tie-in novels to not giving a single shit about Infinite, or Bungie going from the company that made one of my favorite franchises of the 2000s to making Destiny (ugh), or BioWare going from being one of my favorite developers ever to a developer I kind of wish would just die quietly and get it over with, or even just going from being obsessed with Doctor Who for more than a quarter century to just wishing it would end and never, ever come back now. It's like the reverse of Romeo and Juliet, where my greatest hates spring from my greatest loves.

Though I should probably stop finding it so surprising considering how often it's been happening lately. It's starting to feel like the universe is determined to take everything I've ever loved and transform it into something utterly terrible, just to spite me.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Zeus posted...

I think there have been a few things like that.

The first thing that came to mind for me was Deadgirl.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_P8qEkgI_w
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Zeus posted...

Getting close to the next topic. Are we keeping on the COVID theme? If so, we could use
* The Continued (Natural) Self-Quarantining of the Geeks
* The Geeks Don't Go to Camp
* 28 Geeks Later

Or we could go with Twilight of the Geeks, if it hasn't been used. In general, I don't think we'll see many new things around the corner.

Geekerdammerung

(Or, to go for an even geekier combo reference, Twilight of the Planet of the Geeks)

I actually like 28 Geeks later, though. Not only is it thematically appropriate, it's a good pun. The timescale isn't entirely accurate (it should be more like 16 Geeks Later, if we count from when shutdowns started in the US, or closer to 33 Geeks Later if we count from the end of November), but it kind of averages out well enough.



Zeus posted...

That one was easy, since I never liked him before. In fact, it seems like it's almost always the ones I don't like that turn out to be monsters (whereas the ones I do like merely turn out to be assholes or creeps). Maybe I have a super-power. Do you think it's too late for me to join a school for gifted youngsters so I can hone my ability?

Considering how Marvel's retconned their characters over the last decade or two, you'd never be able to join any School for Gifted Youngsters with that power, because it would start pinging the moment you met any of the Headmasters or teachers.

As for Benoit, I also sort of fall into the "I never really cared all that much about him" in the past, because I always went more for personality than workrate, and Benoit only really had one of those things. But at the same time, I don't recoil in horror every time I see him show up in an old wrestling video game or PPV or similar sort of deal.

I wouldn't go actively seeking any of his matches out, but on the other hand, I wouldn't be doing that regardless.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

I'm assuming I never had a lvl 100 Pokemon, because I only ever played Pokemon Blue long enough to beat it, and I have zero memory of what Pokemon I had or what team I was using by the end (because it was 20 years ago, and I barely cared about it even then).

I probably only played long enough to beat the Elite Four and then stopped, which I'm assuming left all of my Pokemon much lower than 100. I definitely didn't "catch 'em all", because that required trading, and a) I didn't know anyone with Pokemon Red, b) it wasn't even my game - I borrowed the GameBoy and the game from a friend, c) I was 22 at the time and didn't even remotely give a shit.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Zeus posted...

42

Also, 4 posts and nobody said "42"? Tsk!

I only just saw this topic.

Besides, I prefer "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?"
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Zeus posted...

But the Cosby thing gives you a very good reason to stop liking Cosby >_> I'm talking more for no particular reason.

This was my problem. I was going to answer your question last night, but then I realized that I have justification for nearly every single case where I dislike someone. It might not be a justification that other people agree with, and it may be subject to change over time, but I can almost always explain why I dislike someone.

I honestly can't think of a single person in my entire life where I've just gone "Man, I don't like that person, but I'm not sure why". Definitely not in a scenario where I actually liked them to begin with, and then I just spontaneously woke up one day and decided I didn't like them anymore.

I can't even use the rationale that I think a lot of people might fall back on and go "Well, I liked [insert shitty teen-humor/music individual here] when I was a teenager, but then I grew up and realized they were kind of stupid", because I generally hated most things teenagers like when I was a teenager. In some ways, it's part of why I've never really had that "I'm ashamed of the things I liked as a teenager" phase so many people seem to go through, because I wasn't much of a teenager even when I WAS a teenager. I've basically been a curmudgeonly old man since I was 12.



Zeus posted...

I hate John Cusack (because he's a smug, self-righteous asshole), but I still watched -- and hated -- 1408.

But did you watch Hot Tub Time Machine?

I have no strong feelings about John Cusack one way or another (though I do tend to think he does a lot of pretentious movies I dislike because of the movie more than the actor), but I loved Hot Tub Time Machine. Not really because of his performance (he was basically the Straight Man, and the Straight Man is almost never the reason why you like any given film/show/performance, even if the Straight Man is often necessary to cast the other characters into better relief), but he was inoffensive enough that he didn't detract from it for me.



The Wave Master posted...

It's harder than it looks because I like old episodes of The Cosby Show, but Bill Cosby is just a rapist P.O.S. and I just end up turning the television in defeat.

I always find it interesting comparing older wrestling fans who used to be huge Chris Benoit fans when he was alive who absolutely cannot stand to see anything with him in it (even the old video games) to this day, as opposed to the people who are adamant about being able to separate the performer from the performance and still appreciate his work as a wrestler even if they find his actions as a person reprehensible. Ranging all the way from people who can't even watch old PPVs if he was on them (even matches he's not in), to people who argue he should still be in the Hall of Fame for his work, because his contributions to/impact on the industry were significant even if his personal life was a horror show.

Though Benoit's an interesting case study even for other reasons. Some people absolutely loathe him for being a monster, some people just sort of feel a bit creeped out by watching his old work now because they know what he did (but don't feel a visceral negative reaction towards him because they never really HAD a strong emotional or empathetic connection to his wife and kid, so the whole tragedy is more abstract and intellectualized for them), and some people don't seem overly bothered by him at all. And then there are the people who actually kind of feel sorry for him, or see him as a victim himself in a lot of ways, because of how messed up his mental state was at that point due to steroids, severe brain damage/CTE (from years of concussions), and the death of Eddie Guerrero apparently leaving him an emotional wreck (which raises the question of, if he'd ever gotten help for any of those things at any point, would he and his family still be alive today?).

I've never really had a huge problem separating performers from the performance (so, for instance, I can still watch The Usual Suspects in spite of the fact that the director and one of the main actors have both been accused of serial molestation of younger men/boys), but there's always an underlying feeling of awareness that "this person probably did terrible things", which can make me feel a bit creepy or uneasy (usually depending on exactly what they were accused/convicted of), and it can feel extremely awkward if the thing you're watching relates to the thing they were accused of (like, say, watching someone accused of being a rapist engaging in a rape scene, someone accused of being a murderer killing someone in a scene, etc). So the degree of creep factor probably could influence how much I like something overall. But I almost have the visceral sort of "OH MY GOD TURN THIS OFF" sort of reaction to anything based on what the people in it have done.

I feel like, if I knee-jerk stopped liking things if the people involved in the creation of those things turn out to be terrible people, I'd never be able to like anything ever again. Because there are a LOT of terrible people in the world, and have been all throughout history. Humans are basically walking sacks of feces.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Zeus posted...

TTG was something of a love letter to the Teen Titans cartoon

Not really. It's just using the general designs and voice actors of the original but deliberately skewing every aspect of the narrative and to a younger target demo.

It's the exact same thing they did with Thundercats. The remake aimed at teens/adults failed, so they made one aimed at younger children instead.

Studios have openly admitted the reasoning in the past - basically, intelligent shows aimed at older audiences don't really sell merch, so they're more expensive to produce (because you can't underwrite the costs via toy sales or t-shirt/Underoos money). So there's a motivation to aim downward (especially since it's generally easier/cheaper to shit out lolrandom kid cartoons than trying to develop something both kids and adults will enjoy). That's the same thing that mostly killed Young Justice on Cartoon Network as well (the ratings were actually fine and the show was critically praised, but it was too expensive to produce for a show that wasn't selling toys, so it was doomed).
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Lokarin posted...

Something for PO?

It's on Steam, so not really, no.

But I was actually aware Beyond a Steel Sky was a thing. It's a sequel to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beneath_a_Steel_Sky

I never really played Beneath a Steel Sky though. I wasn't even aware of it at the time it first came out (and thus have no real nostalgia for it or its world). As much as I'm looking forward to Cyberpunk 2077, I've never actually been a huge fan of the Cyberpunk genre in general. That and my notorious distaste for PC gaming means I never played it back in the day. If anything, most of my awareness of it comes from this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAxdnWaOUL8
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Most new cartoon remakes are pretty shit. Mostly because they seem to be being made by people who don't actually give a fuck about the originals, and only want to exploit the brand recognition, while either catering to much younger audiences (a la Teen Titans Go) or pandering to Tumblr.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

I owned one of these:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-kVB_-1jYk

I probably still have it around somewhere. Stuffed in a box in storage. Unless it got thrown out years ago. Though the voice-box is long gone - that broke decades ago.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

captpackrat posted...

I've seen Casino Royale.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSEmKXzpQMQ

Came in to mention that movie as well. Though I've seen both of them.



captpackrat posted...

The title theme was written by Burt Bacharach and performed by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass.

I've always assumed this was the main reason why they reference Bacharach in Austin Powers.

That version of Casino Royale and Our Man Flint feel like they were a huge influence on Austin Powers. Maybe with a touch of Jason King, if Mike Myers had seen it.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

My instinctive first answer is He-Man, because it was sort of the most significant at the time I was actually watching cartoons.

Ghostbusters was my second thought, because while most kids (at least the ones I knew) were kind of snobbish about it at the time (because WE didn't know there was a Ghost Busters TV show in the 70s and just wondered why the hell this show was so weird and didn't have anything to do with the 80's movie), it's not actually that BAD of a cartoon. Whereas He-Man kind of ages really, really poorly if you try to go back and watch it as an adult.

Filmation was never really a major studio for me, though. Marvel/Sunbow and DiC probably produced waaay more of the must-watch cartoons of my childhood.
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Sahuagin posted...

I think I prefer this for a dwarf theme song, even though it was originally a joke:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34CZjsEI1yU

Was literally going to post this the moment I realized what the first video was.



Sephiroth C Ryu posted...

A little too metal/shouty for me.

I'd agree somewhat. I'm not adverse to metal in general, and I'd agree with Sahuagin that metal feels like THE most appropriate genre for dwarven music... but as someone who tends to like more melody and fluid harmonizing to music, I definitely prefer the Yogs version of Diggy Diggy Hole over the Wind Rose one.

That being said, apparently Wind Rose's entire catalogue of songs is all dwarven/Tolkien inspired, so there's a lot there if you're interested in that sort of thing.



Metalsonic66 posted...

Sounds like the song in the topic post is heavily inspired by the Misty Mountains song

I definitely heard that in there as well. Ironically, I'd kind of say the flavor of it falls somewhere between the Hobbit/live-action version (that most people today are going to be familiar with), and the "original" version from the Rankin-Bass cartoon in the 70s (which is the one I know better/prefer):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N_2TOUOdEc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4TysZL6YiA&t=0m50s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUXP8VEXWMs
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deoxxys posted...

Gatorade to replenish those electrolytes

This.

When I'd go out and party hardcore when I was younger, I used to have a "Sobriety Kit" that was basically Gatorade and a can of Mountain Dew. The caffeine in the soda would counteract the depressant effects of the alcohol, while the Gatorade would help prevent dehydration. I'd drink it all before going to bed, and I'd almost never have a hangover the next day.

These days I very rarely drink to the point where hangover would even be an issue in the first place, so I don't really try to prevent it.
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The Wave Master posted...

And now Ghost of Tsushima arrives on Friday.

SpeeDLeemon posted...

hype hype hypeee

https://i.imgur.com/rAFCwLc.png

For all that people have been jerking off over this game for a while now, I still honestly have almost no idea what the game actually is.
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wolfy42 posted...

So then are the Ninja turtles kinda related to Batman? (since Ben played daredevil and batman)

They're only related to the Goddamn Batman because Frank Miller wrote that one as well.

http://angelluiscolon.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/v91ipc2.jpg

Miller also wrote The Dark Knight Returns.
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Minecraft technically counts, and I still play that all the time.

Mass Effect 1 and Dragon Age: Origins both meet the criteria as well, and I tend to play those every now and then. Same for Jade Empire, KotOR, and Baldur's Gate.

I'm much less likely to play Fallout 3 and Oblivion, but those still count. As does Ass Creed 1 & 2.

Most of the Halo games worth playing all predate 2010 (though Reach was in 2010).

Saints Row 2 was 2008, and I still play that from time to time.

I actually wanted to play my old Deus Ex games a while back, two of which predate 2010, but Invisible War isn't 360 compatible.

The original Borderlands was pre-2010, and while it's not quite as fun or interesting as Borderlands 2, it's still an okay game to replay every now and then.

Alpha Protocol came out in 2010, and I haven't played it for a while, but I've been considering playing it again at some point.

I also bought the PS4 version of Day of the Tentacle not that long ago, and that's a game from 1993

I could probably think of more if I really concentrated or checked my game library. And that's not including games I WOULD play but can't due to lack of necessary hardware/software (ie, some of my old PC games like Gabriel Knight or Vampire: Bloodlines).
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FatalAccident posted...

wat

Matter bad, spirit good.

Therefore, the God who creates the material world is automatically inherently evil.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism
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BlazeAndBlade posted...

what new star sign are you now NASA changed them

This is literally not how any of this works.
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Gnostics basically believe that the "God" of the Bible basically IS Satan, and the entirety of the Bible is mostly his PR campaign to fool you into worshiping him while he shackles you to the material plane and keeps you from ascending to your true potential.

The "real" God in that scenario is the true creator of the universe who is a purely spiritual being who is responsible for the creation of all of our souls, and thus our free will and potential for transcendence, but the meat our souls are trapped in and the material world we live in are all the work of the evil god who is opposed to the true God.

That thinking has been at the heart of a number of heretical movements through history - the Albigensian Crusade in 13th century France was more or less rooting out this exact philosophy, and it's where the phrase "Kill them all, God will sort them out" originally comes from (though the original version was more along the lines of "Kill them all, God shall know His own").
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Part of the point of genre fiction is to raise possibilities that could be explored later - for example, sci-fi stories about the potential drawbacks of robot rebellion and AI evolving to the point of self-awareness and then immediately turning against humanity mean that, when we DO reach a point of technological sophistication where we CAN build robots and AI, we'll likely take precautions against those sorts of things. So fiction can basically serve as a sort of large group brainstorming session to all attention to potential dangers.

That's not really "testing a hypothesis", though, as much as it is proposing a hypothesis.
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wolfy42 posted...

I think Jack Chalker had done Midnight at the well of souls

I always preferred the Four Lords of the Diamond books of his myself. Never really got into the Well of Souls series.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Lords_of_the_Diamond
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Worth remembering, the turtles were original a parody of/homage to Frank Miller's run on Daredevil (to the point where the ooze that mutated them is literally the same goo that gave Daredevil his powers, after it drained down into the sewers).

A story called "The Last Ronin" and based on a story the original writers came up with 30 years ago, could just as easily be (and very much looks like) their parody of/homage to Miller's earlier comic, "Ronin":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C5%8Dnin_(DC_Comics)



WhiskeyDisk posted...

Statistically, Women do outlive men...

They have to exist first, though.

Venus was pretty much confined to one show and a couple of one-off jokes. Supposedly Laird absolutely loathed the character and the concept, and has sort of put his foot down for all adaptations afterward to never, ever mention her again.

Since this story is supposed to be a sort of "love letter" to the original stories and the original creators, based on an original story idea they came up with 30 years ago, I can't see them including something that one of those creators hates with a passion.



SunWuKung420 posted...

I hope he uses all 4 weapons.

I hope at some point, he fuses them all together and makes extra long-handled katana-sai-chucks.
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wolfy42 posted...

So many Heinlein fans were seriously dissapointed by it. It's NOTHING like the original book.

It's more like the opposite of the book.

The movie basically takes every theme, concept, and moral of the book and sort of argues the exact counter opposite of it via hyper-excessive satire. It's basically like Verhoeven read the book, and then hated it so much he made the movie solely to shit on the book and everyone who actually liked it. It's kind of like the Colbert Report of its era.

And then half the people who watched the movie completely missed the satire and took it at face value, which sort of took it all the way back around again.
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JigsawTDC posted...

It's been a few years since I've been active in one of these topics, but I recently got the first Thomas Covenant trilogy! It's been on my reading list for years, a recommendation from PO I believe.

It's one of my favorite fantasy series ever, pretty much tied with Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber.

Fair warning for Covenant - it can be hard going, especially early on. You may find yourself kind of hating the main character, or at least finding it hard to really empathize with him. But it's ultimately kind of awesome, especially if you try to understand his worldview rather than just condemning it.

The funny trick with Covenant is that, even if you don't like Covenant himself, you may find yourself absolutely falling in love with pretty much every other character in the series. Mhoram, in particular, is one of my favorite characters in all of fantasy.
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Zeus posted...

Geez, the angry mob bitches at them to change their name and now that same angry mob bitches at them for changing it.

It's almost like giving in to psychological pressure only encourages people to use more psychological pressure on you, because now they know you can be bullied into doing anything they want you to.
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Nah, he's a pretty good actor. The problem is that people keep paying him $50 mil+ to just play "The Fresh Prince" over and over and over and over again, so he never really feels the need to actually use any of his acting talent in roles.
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wolfy42 posted...

I just found this version a waste, a total waste in fact, almost in every way.

One problem is that a lot of people think "James Gunn" and then go "Man, Guardians of the Galaxy was awesome!", and they're left with a somewhat inaccurate view of just what sort of director he actually is.

But James Gunn is also the person behind Slither (which was pretty twisted) and Super (which was pretty damned dark). He got his start working for Troma (which... well... is Troma).

That's actually part of why I lack the optimism a lot of people have for Suicide Squad 2 that those people developed once he signed on to do it. Because a lot of the systemic studio problems that have hurt DC's attempt at a cinematic universe from the very beginning still exist behind the scenes, and because Gunn doesn't necessarily have a Midas Touch where everything he works on is gold. It's possible GotG turned out so well because Marvel's rigid administrative grip synergized with his talents to let the best aspects of his ability shine through, but working with DC will encourage his worse traits (or at least let him get away with more that might pull down the overall product).

Hard to say for sure at the moment WHAT the movie is going to look like, but I could easily see it going either way.
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FatalAccident posted...

Or maybe theyre trying to subvert the movement by posting nonsensical sensationalised bs like this to put people off having the real conversation? Who knows

You mean the way that pretty much all media does in the modern age, regardless of political leanings, mainly because "crazy" and "outrage" get better ratings?

Think of some of the most ridiculous clickbait article titles you've seen on the Internet. That's basically what the 24-hour news cycle and competing for-profit news channels have turned "the news" into in general, because the drive to get eyes on your product outweighs anything even remotely resembling "the truth".

Any time a given movement or group begins to push an ideological agenda, regardless of what that agenda is, or which "side" it's on, broadcast news will almost always present things in a way that encourages the viewer to simultaneously be angry about but also somewhat mocking of the group in question. Because humans are terrible and that's exactly the sort of narrative that pulls ratings.
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wolfy42 posted...

Superman from the comics has always been too unbelievably good, especially when you see others from his planet are not like that at all. I would have rather seen a more realistic superman, who eventually spirals into a monster, it could have been a really heart wrenching story and really got you to care about the characters.

I think the key problem is, the premise of Superman is that his (adoptive) parents were SO FUCKING AWESOME, that they basically raised him to be the most moral and upstanding person on the entire planet. The fact that he has powers is almost incidental - Clark Kent was going to be an incredibly good man even if he was nothing more than the average human.

(This is also why people were kind of annoyed that the Kents kind of seemed like moderately shitty people in Man of Steel - if anything, Superman's parents are supposed to be more paragons of what it means to be HUMAN than Superman himself ever was. They're the best and brightest of us, which is why the boy they raised became so moral in return. Had they been anything less, Superman would have been less.)

So having a story where the kid turns out to be evil "because reasons" really isn't the "opposite" of Superman. What you kind of need is a story where shitty parents turn him into something evil. Where his slow descent into corruption and super-powered wrath is fueled by the irresponsibility of bad people and a bad situation, teaching him to follow in their footsteps (only with the ability to exponentially DO greater evil because of his powers).

Brightburn wants to have its cake and eat it too, with parents who are mostly good but who raise a monster because alien puberty turns you into the devil, and because his space parents were basically monsters (ie, it seems like it's coming down really hard on the nature side of the "nature versus nurture" debate). Which is kind of boring and meh.

Now crash that baby pod in the middle of Detroit and have the kid get raised by a drug dealer and a alcoholic prostitute, who regularly heap abuse and beatings on him for never measuring up, surrounded by classmates who constantly abuse him with the worst excesses of bullying (and I mean beatings and death threats, not name-calling that hurts your feelings), and I'll be way more interested when he winds up lashing out and realizing that he can murder-fuck his way across the entire world and no one can stop him once he starts developing powers. Because THAT makes sense.
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DarkKirby2500 posted...

There are also games where every ending is bad is some regard so you're choosing which one you think is least bad.

So Far Cry, then?
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Odds are if theaters are still closed, they'll do digital release instead.

The theater release date was likely planned in advance before any of the current problems started, and is still mostly just a hold-over. As the release date gets closer with no sign of theaters being open, there won't be much reason to retain it when they can just negotiate digital release terms/methods instead.

If anything, that might be the reason why they haven't announced a digital release date - there's a lot of admin involved with negotiating whether your movie is going to show up on cable/Hulu/Netflix/Disney+/etc, so they might still be working on a deal behind the scenes, so can't really announce a distribution platform yet. Even if everyone involved on the distribution side is fully aware this is never going to be in actual theaters.

My understanding is that the movie is being produced by MGM/UA, and I'm not sure if they have any preferential arrangements with any existing streaming services. So it's harder to predict where it might go than it would if, for instance, a studio like Disney was involved.
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Morality is incredibly subjective, so I view most endings as being at least somewhat morally ambiguous.

Unless you're dealing with a story where the villain is 100% cartoon evil with no redeeming features of any kind and is entirely motivated by the desire to make everything terrible and everyone miserable solely for shits and giggles, it's usually fairly easy to shift perspective and make the heroes the villains and the villains heroes. Or to at least blur the lines so that things are less "Black and White" and more "Grey and Gray".

Especially in stories that are trying to be at least somewhat realistic, because that's what real life IS. Very few people go around thinking of themselves as the villain of someone else's story - most people see themselves as the heroes of their own story. Even when they're kind of terrible.

We're mostly just fooled into accepting the protagonist of any given story's perspective on what is right or moral because they're the protagonist, and we constantly see events through their eyes, and tend to want to see them win (especially if they're presented as being sympathetic or cool), but their world-view isn't necessarily objectively correct (or correct at all).

If anything, most stories tend to have to give the villain "kick the dog" scenes specifically to prevent this sort of realization - that the "hero" has just done epic levels of property damage or helped cost innocent lives or otherwise made things so much worse in the process of stopping a villain who might not have been all that evil in the first place. And that in some cases, literally everything would have been much better off if the hero had just stayed home.

Plenty of stories where the heroes win and it seems like everyone's going to live happily ever after can be countered with "Yeah, but none of that would have been a problem in the first place if the hero hadn't been stupid/screwed up" or "If the villain had completely won the world probably would have been better off" or even "It's a short-term victory but in the long-term people are going to be just as miserable or outright dead for different reasons".
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Smiffwilm posted...

Why not gun-chucks?

Why not both?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_01Z497SFa8&t=0m20s



SunWuKung420 posted...

Swords don't run out of bullets.

Only improperly used swords dull and crack.

Also, your noodle-arms would get tired after about 13 seconds worth of swinging it around, so that's also a drawback.

I'm also pretty sure you'd never be able to stab a guy from like 50 feet away, but hey, stranger things have happened.
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DirtBasedSoap posted...

I think suddenly getting rid of money and switching to bartering and trading would result in the deaths of millions of people but what do I know?

Hey now, we have to break a few eggs to make a better world, you know!

Now here, accept these 14 heads of lettuce I grew in my backyard in exchange for pants. It's getting kind of drafty!
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Zeus posted...

A return to worshiping us old gods. Frankly, society went to hell when people stopped.

When I read this it took a second for me to parse the context (I missed the "us"), and for a moment I thought you were talking about the Old Gods who tend to pop up in Lovecraft and his imitators. Or just sort of chthonic semi-entities in general. And I was all ready to jump on that train. We need more unknowable Powers that drive anyone who contemplates them mad from the knowing of it.



WastelandCowboy posted...

There's a lot to be said about your power if you're incapable of getting it done yourself. I mean, really. What kind of god are you if you can't demonstrate your wrath and power as a warning to us lowly humans? Lol. Some god you are.

To be fair, it's a pretty common god-trope that gods require belief to be empowered, so it's really only our own lack of faith that has left the old gods weak and incapable of the sort of grandstanding they used to do. So it's really our own damned fault. If we want miracles and magic, we have to earn them.

Conversely, there's also the corollary that belief can also theoretically empower a new god who has never existed before if enough people believe in it, so again it's a complete failure of imagination and worthiness on our part that we haven't conjured up a God of Rainbows, Ice Cream and Hand Jobs and faithed them into reality (and even ignoring the metaphysical aspects, that's essentially how gods DO work on a metaphorical level - ie, they're our assumptions of what gods would and should be, because we're the ones who invented and perpetuated the concept of them).

ie, if we weren't such shitty people, we wouldn't have such shitty gods.



Zeus posted...

It was the Last of the Titans. Now they're all extinct. Thanks a lump, humanity!

Hey now, that one's on you for banishing all the rest of them to Tartarus.
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YonicBoom posted...

Only problem would be if somehow it failed and affected honest purchasers of the game.

This has always been the real problem with anti-piracy measures. The pirates usually find ways around all the DRM and pirate the game anyway, while the only people who actually suffer are the people who legally paid for the product.

Which then, ironically, can encourage those people to avoid paying for the game and just track down a pirated copy (which plays better), thus doing the complete opposite of what was originally intended.
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I'd assume it has something to do with the sect of Islam (though I'm not 100% sure it's spelled exactly that way).

Don't quote me on this (I don't remember the exact details), but Shi'ite Islam sort of revolves around the idea of Imams being the core of their religion, and there's something like twelve of them throughout history, but there's also different factions that disagree over whether or not all 12 are actually "canon", and the sects tend to be referred to by which Imam they consider the last legitimate one. So there's a faction known as "the Fivers", there's one for the Seventh Imam, and so on.

If I ALSO remember correctly, I think the Ismaili (sp?) sect are the ones that gave birth to the Assassins (via a different doctrinal dispute).
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Dmess85 posted...

how does one grab a sword chuck ???

Carefully.
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Zeus posted...

But do you think each character would need to be trademarked to sell them as toys?

Absolutely, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to use the name of the character on the packaging if someone else snagged the trademark.
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