Tale

It is fairly easy to be popular among young audiences. They share the direct-to-DVD market with b-movies, you might have noticed. What is a noteworthy achievement is being popular with the entire family. Getting it to be something that the parents enjoy sitting down watching with their children.

I'm not surprised. Season 3 wasn't even an entire book. It felt like so little happened compared to the first two seasons.

Maybe I am reading too much into it. But the problems with those movies isn't that they're not timeless classics. It's that they're bad. That's kind of my point. The criticism isn't because they're not as good as the originals. The criticism is because they're bad movies. Expectations aren't a factor. They're not Sharknado bad, which is also a movie some people enjoyed, but that's not ultimately a valuable standard. If they hadn't been part of an already successful franchise, two thirds of them wouldn't have been made at all. John Carter was better and it's not getting any sequels.

Dismissing criticism by blaming expectations doesn't sit well with me. There's been plenty of good work out there that was met with high expectations and still pleased the audience. Peacekeeper Wars and Serenity to point to two examples that are dear to me. But there exists numerous other sequels, reboots, and TV seasons that are all well received despite following a high bar, standard, or simply an insular and rabid fanbase. Broadly dismissing criticism like that only strikes me as an unwillingness to understand the criticism. The problems with the Star Wars prequels are probably the most broadly discussed. So not at least acknowledging its failings and saying that you prefer the parts it did well, such as special effects, strikes me as perhaps intellectually dishonest. If not purposefully blind.

I can't agree. Even the things I worry about only lend to being less than their potential, not inherently bad. The movie is going to have an uphill battle, particularly with having to deal with the 30 year time skip and passing the torch. But uphill battles can be won, they're just hard.

I'm not worried about Abrams. I liked the first new Trek. It's the second that I really dislike. And given Damon Lindeloff's involvement with Prometheus, I'm tempted to blame him for the both. Kasdan worries me in a different way. Yay, he wrote Empire. But he's not really had any work in the public eye for a decade. So whatever skill he had might not be skill he still has. And even then, whatever he liked to write might not be what he still likes to write. Am I just a bitter pessimist?

I'd disagree on BSG being solid. And Serenity was 9 years ago. Star Trek and Star Wars are literally the only ones ongoing that aren't just hypothetical. I absolutely hated Into Darkness for the exact reasons I dislike franchises. And there's currently more bad in Star Wars than good. We need something new that can create its own principles and themes. That only burdens itself when it's a failure. That's not occupied with trying to raise the stakes of the ones it's following or betray their themes.

All the talk about Yuuzhan Vong is making me bitter at franchising again. It would be so nice if we could have a broad set of Space Opera on film to enjoy.

I'm not exactly sure that random Chilean retailers have the inside scoop.

I just finished watching all things Evangelion. The Rebuild movies, the series, End of Evangelion. All to help get in the mood for science fiction. Next I think I'm moving to Martian Successor Nadesico. Which I don't believe I've watched in nearly a decade.

Played Blackwell Epiphany over the weekend. It's as good as any of the other installments, perhaps better because of its puzzle design. I only got "stuck" twice over the game.

It could also be the same "I didn't really pay attention and don't care" that caused Liam Neeson to pronounce Coruscant as Gorazat in The Phantom Menace.

In other words, nothing changed. The EU canon was never treated the same as the film canon. EU canon started with the clone wars being about cloned Jedi going mad. Han Solo used to work for the Empire. And when you kill a Dark Side user, they explode.

I think I want to play Morrowind. But magic is so boring and I've done stealth/combat a hundred times.

Don't even bother with effigies unless you want to turn off invasions. Just get summoned yourself. You'll even learn the boss that way. I went back to Dark Souls 2 and did both of the Rat bosses. I was seriously overlevelled for these areas. I want to try Belfry Sol next, but I hate the Belfries so much.

The new combat system looks good to me from what little I've seen. But as a caveat, I did enjoy the combat, even the filler, of Dragon Age 2. Quite frankly, as long as you give me a group of characters with particular strengths and weaknesses that require some degree of micro, I'm going to have a good time. I'm far more worried about their implementation of choice and the fact that it's hard to evaluate that without playing it yourself. Thankfully Darrah clarified the outlandish ending claim to something a bit more workable. I think that shows a bit more self-awareness than previous.

Gratz How long did it take you and how was it compared to DS1 ? A little over 50 hours and I beat every boss except a few optional ones tied to PvP areas and Darklurker. But now that I think about it, maybe I should go through the areas leading to Darklurker. Better in ways than DS1, worse than others. I'm not as interested in the world they have set up. But I like the mechanics better.

I beat Dark Souls 2. Now for Catherine or Rayman Origins.

New thread.

Last time on what you did today, mkreku gets a package that may or may not be a mail order bride in pieces.

Thread is over the limit. New one.

Stealing Mor's OP from the last thread. here

I'm actually kind of disappointed at how little that trailer moved me. Needed catchier music.

I don't think there was anything careful or fun about selecting a melee weapon. And the aiming wasn't just careful, it was outright finnicky on melee. There's nothing "smart" to make "dumb" there, unless you want to consider ammo conservation on the stun prod as intrinsically more intelligent than the battery conservation. Single acts like either aren't fun. I have a big issue with cutscene actions like HR did. But I also have issues with how Deus Ex required to hit the arbitrary spot on the back of the head that causes your weapon to actually do what you want it to.

In terms of world design, it's more like Dark Souls. Mostly. The one complaint about the world design that's common is that it doesn't make as much sense as Dark Souls 1 did. Which I guess can be perceived as being like Demon's Souls. But mainly in Dark Souls 1 you walk from place to place and the transitions from castles to gardens to lava all ended up making sense. In Dark Souls 2, you get in an elevator in a windmill and somehow end up at a lava castle. That took quite a few people out of the setting. I seem to recall this elevator went up. Demon's Souls didn't even pretend most of the areas were connected, though. But my experience is that the areas that are connected made sense.