Lurker > colliding

Ready for Finale: Take 2

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while you slept, the world changed

Esuriat posted...

Apparently the hospitals in southwest Missouri (centered around Springfield) and northern Arkansas are seeing a greater influx of patients than at any point through the pandemic.

super spreader events are back baby

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people whining about news coverage of variants can rest assured that the US at least is never going under lockdown again, even if it does mutate and lead to something that the current vaccines don't protect against. US is ride or die vaccine at this point, for better or worse.


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Waluigi1 posted...

So like are they just trying to make it sound scarier?

welcome to the media

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the only reason I was able to get vaccinated so early is because Alabama was doing such a poor job getting their 70+ overs vaccinated that they had to open it up to teachers early

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UltimaterializerX posted...

lmao

People being dumb and handing their freedoms over was a green light for government to literally never let you go back to normal.

By the way, has anyone checked on Florida lately? Texas? Sweden? Wasnt there supposed to be a bunch of spikes in cases?

According to worldofmeters.info, yesterday Florida had the second largest number of new cases (7,121) in the United States, behind Michigan (EDIT: whoops, third largest number. New York is #1).

Currently active cases, Florida is #4 at 457,132.

Texas and Florida are #2 and #3 in total number of coronavirus cases over the course of the pandemic, at 2,826,457 and 2,111,807 respectively.

Sweden is either in a "second wave" or still in their first wave depending on your perspective. They're at 7,760 daily cases currently. Their high came on December 23, 2020, where they had 11,376 cases.

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history will prove 1080 snowboarding > ocarina of time

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My second pfizer dose came with more mild side effects than my first (which were also mild). So I guess I'm lucky

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let's go spyro

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Finally caught up on Fire Force. This show is not good! It's not trash either, but it's pretty boring. I'm kind of shocked I finished it tbh.

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Sawyer absolutely has the best arc of the show. Desmond is a bit overrated because of how good he is in Season 2 and 4. I can't tell you anything about what he did in Seasons 5 and 6.

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2013 was some year. I still don't get the love for LBW. Pretty sad that Spelunky was the ultimate loser in 2012.

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I know this is probably not an original thought, but today I realized that Ichinose is basically Zoro/Luffy squashed together while Zenkichi is Usopp/Sanji and it feels almost like a purposeful homage rather than a rip off.

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Don't see the appeal in Christian.

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I personally don't care for Charlie but as I said earlier, he served an important role on the show and killing him off literally ruined like three other characters so yeah. Should've kept him around.

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I'd say the final ends up the same and Galaxy 2 still wins it.

FFXIII loses much earlier.

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After request, deeps sent me a really informative and totally smart explanation about the complexity of Latino ethnicity that I agreed with completely. He totally didn't need to do it and he did anyway, so thanks. Back to character ranking this truly terrible show.

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sure I'm done.

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DeepsPraw posted...

well he's obviously not black or asian and I don't think he's supposed to be native american or pacific islander either.

please don't tell me you think all latino or hispanic people are people of color...

generally the label "person of color" encompasses latinx peoples. I don't know/remember if the fictional character Hurley from Lost identifies as a white hispanic, but even if he did I would still consider him a person of color / non-white.

edit: but I mean I guess it really depends on if Hurley considers himself one or not.

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DeepsPraw posted...

hurley is latino, but I'm pretty sure he's still white

hmmmm

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Season 6 Sayid is the stupidest plot development ever. I swear the writers/producers must've just hated Sayid and wanted to kill him earlier, but his contract or something prevented it. It's horrible.

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Frank rules and is totally better than stupid Jin

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Keamy's real good and was also one of the better memes of season 6, which is only enjoyable in meme form.

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last minute entry for your consideration: metal gear zeke

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I really vibed with Jack in Season 3 and 4 when he was an alcoholic listening to the Pixies and Nirvana in his car.

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perfect sun write-up. agreed on everything 100%

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as much as I dislike season 6 the "flash sideways" aspect never bothered me. I called it being the afterlife early on and thought it was ok. the on-island stuff is god awful though.

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Prince of Persia? lol damn board 8 being bad at polls strikes again

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Richard Alpert was definitely the moment the showrunners threw off the covers and flatly admitted that they read the fan theories and actively tried to both subvert and play along with expectations

just awful

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ZeroSignal620 posted...

Best Game of 2000
https://www.bracketmaker.com/tmenu.cfm?1&tid=308442

Apparently that would be the case for Arcadia, being the only #1 seed to miss the Elite Eight after a loss to Valkyrie Profile. The upsets were a minimum this time around; we did see #11 seed Parasite Eve II knock off #6 seed Persona 2 in overtime, and Diablo II barely survive against #13 seed Wild Arms 2 [...]

Other things we saw in 2000 included the following...

2) Chances are if you were a PlayStation RPG in 2000, you were in this bracket. FF9, Vagrant Story, Wild Arms 2, Legend of Mana, Valkyrie Profile, Chrono Cross, Rhapsody, Legend of Dragoon, Persona 2, Parasite Eve II, Alundra 2, Eternal Blue Complete, and Breath of Fire IV were all in this for a grand total of 13 PS1 RPGs (14 if you count Harvest Moon)

What an amazing array of JRPG's. No one asked, but let's tier them just for fun:

Excellent gaming experiences
FF9
Eternal Blue Complete

Actually quite good
Breath of Fire IV
Persona 2

Significantly flawed masterpieces
Skies of Arcadia
Chrono Cross
Vagrant Story

That anime opening though
Wild Arms 2

Average
Valkyrie Profile
Legend of Dragoon
Rhapsody
Legend of Mana

Never played
Parasite Eve II

Ummm
Alundra 2


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Jacob sucks totally. Of all the characters who SHOULD have been a maguffin, it's this dude. I'm firmly of the mindset the show should've just been Ben v. Widmore and the supernatural stuff should've just been restricted to Hurley eps.

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I like the idea of pressing "X" to get a character profile, but it should have more information than their portrait and name. Maybe they could make additional info unlockable somehow? Like you do well on maps and you get their height/likes/dislikes, etc. Could add some nice flavor.

I hope new characters are introduced a bit more naturally than they were here, with a random green event popping up.

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Eko was so good in Season 2 but his death is actually the worst one in the show (up until season 6).

Back in the day, someone on some other message board I posted on said that Season 5 and 6 Locke makes more sense if that character is Mr. Eko instead. I personally agree but that's also me as a Locke fan trying to undo the show's character assassination of him.

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Pretty sure Monaghan (sp) wanted to stay, but I'm not sure. He also might have been one who got into some kind of legal trouble (but seriously, this happened to so many cast members that it's hard to remember). The only one who I know actively WANTED TO LEAVE was Mr Eko (which is a damn shame).

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I like how by the time the writers finally decided to reveal that she and Jack were related the fans had moved on to not caring.

Another reason they probably shouldn't have killed Charlie. I'm telling y'all the show really took a hit without him there. Charlie was annoying, but he was also one of the most sympathetic characters, and a whole bunch of characters suffered without him there to play off of (Claire and Hurley notably).

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Lasa's right in that the Daily Mail is a garbage source and you should feel bad Corrik but also: yikes. chill out dude.

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I did finally finish the second map. I liked it better than the first.

The voting mechanic is interesting, and I think it has a lot of potential, so long as the story goes in interesting directions.

The dialogue here isn't quite as egregiously fantasy-esque as Octopath, but yeah, it could use some work to sound a bit more natural.


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yeah it's absolutely crazy that they didn't try and make walt matter. even if that actor sucked/turned into an uggo when he got older, they could've recasted him/time-skipped him/ so many things. but nope, he's just a weird kid with random powers.

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boy xenogears sucks huh

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If you haven't learned yet, if you come into one of these polls and say something negative about a game/person/condiment/chip flavor, that choice gets vote- stuffed.

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The most intriguing game from today's Nintendo Direct (besides Mario Golf obviously) was Project Triangle Strategy, the follow-up to Octopath Traveler. It is a top-down isometric strategy rpg, ala Final Fantasy Tactics, which also boasts a kind of "morality system" where the choices you make seemingly affect the story.

I played one map of the demo and my first impressions are as follows.

1. You asked for more banter between characters: you got it. Be careful what you wish for. You are given a party of roughly 8 characters (each to show off a particular unit class ostensibly). Included within these 8 are what I'm guessing are the game's "main characters," a traditional protagonist, his prince friend, the trad protag's fiance, and the trad protag's butler. All of these characters have speaking lines.
2. There are 3 gameplay "stages": story, exploration, and battle. Story is just cutscenes (fully voiced - more on this later). Exploration is basically just a "pre-battle" prep area where you can walk around the map and talk with your party, shop, and search for items. Battle is battle.
3. Battle is Final Fantasy Tactics mixed with modern-day Fire Emblem quality of life changes (enemy line of sight markers mostly). The spell effects are the highlight of the game's graphics and are impressive. For the demo, HP seems to have been raised on the enemies so you can "try out everything." I think this makes battles go slower than they probably should.
4. No permadeath, at least in the demo.
5. The voice acting is average to terrible. Hopefully this is just because it's a demo and they're going to re-voice these lines for the final product, because it is bad.
6. The characters/plot/world are pretty generic fantasy so far. Again, Fire Emblem seems like an influence here, as does Game of Thrones. Here's hoping to plot goes in an interesting direction from here.
7. Music was a bit disappointing, considering the strength of Octopath's. Small sample size I know. It's not bad or anything, but it doesn't immediately grab you the way the battle music of OT does.
8. Graphics aren't quite as good as I remember Octopath's being. Maybe the sprites are still being worked on? The backgrounds still look great though.
9. So far there has been one "morality system" choice. Seems intriguing but not a huge aspect of the demo I guess.

I haven't played the second map yet. I guess it isn't exactly a great sign that I got tired of it after one battle. I think it's mostly due to the artificially toughened enemies. Still psyched for this project.

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Does Board 8 really not like splatoon? Maybe Splatoon 2 is still "fresh" so we don't really need a third? In any case, I was hyped for it.

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Shannon had potential. The writers killed her off too early just to try and develop Sayid's character. She could've been the show's Maggie (TWD).

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GameStonk posted...

Really excited to see how the stuffer ruins this one

came to make this post

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look Xenoblade 2 is bad we all know this. this is well trod territory. but mythra/pyra are well within the standards set for smash acceptability and so I'm fine with them being there.

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KamikazePotato posted...

What Smash considers acceptable for Good Boys and Girls always confuses me

Pyra is a straight-up hentai character but it's Mythra that needs tights?

There's also Bayo of course. Pretty sure the good boys and girls quote was just Sakurai being a big SNK fan and making a joke about Mai. Character design isn't too much of an issue, because they can always just alter their costumes (in before someone claims this is censorship).

Of course, then you have people on the Smash board begging for Saber to be included, and I'm like "Okay that's where the line gets drawn, when the games the characters are from are actually pornographic."

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