Bartimaeus

Trying to catch up with the food thread while being subjected to conspiracy theories and culture wars all because of a brief mention of poppy seeds. Hope you're pleased with yourself, @Gfted1, .

You know, I didn't know exactly how to describe how that specific element looked, but I think you put it perfectly.

The image here looks just about alright...except for the goofy fast pan that happens during that shot, which immediately triggers a derisive snigger from me on account of how grossly uncinematic it looks, and then the cutaway to that hilarious face close-up doesn't help matters any. Amateur hour stuff from amateur hour developers who just couldn't do any better and didn't even seem to understand what the purpose of the cutscene was: there was definitely a way they could've done this without it being an embarrassment, but they flubbed it, because of course they did, that's just what Beamdog always does, and I'm here for it. But bless their hearts, at least they tried. I just feel there's more artistic merit to something that even though it is definitely old and busted (no argument there!)...was nevertheless effective at the time it was made, and you can still appreciate that there was some kind of cohesive artistic vision for it, and that it was able to convey something. At least over something that...well, oh dear, oh my. But as @majestic said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that, so it is what it is.

In all fairness, life would be at least a little easier if I didn't always have to be such an unapologetically massive snob. It's a difficult burden to bear...uh, for myself, and also the people who have the unenviable task of tolerating me, . Speaking of editing the audio, they did: off the top of my head, they inexplicably took out the bit where the unnamed Bhaalspawn tries to plead and barter with Sarevok (who then punches the Bhaalspawn in the face), presumably in reference to the other Bhaalspawn that Sarevok is seeking. So on top of how cheap and ugly the whole affair looks, which already has the effect of eliminating any kind of tension and atmosphere that it had, it would seem to kill much of the intrigue/mystery that the original hinted at as well. I mean, we've all played these games so it doesn't really matter, but come on, this intro cutscene seems sadly all too emblematic of the rather sorry and misguided approach Beamdog took for the BG Enhanced Editions. Sigh. I'd have paid more for an Enhanced Edition that offered less by stripping all the nonsense they added to the game: give me the engine improvements and bugfixes, and let's just call it a day.

I think I'd prefer to see the original video rendered at 160x120 rather than experience this hilarious travesty of artistry... ...but I'll do me, and you'll have to do you - for better and for worse, .

Anyone remember Beamdog's remade BG1 cutscenes, where they replaced the original full motion videos with their bizarre comic book-style slideshows...while also still using cut-ups of the original audio from the full motion videos? Woof: boy, that was a tough scene from a number of angles. I know the original videos were these like horrifically compressed 640x480 MPEGs and they probably didn't feel using them made for a professional product, buuut...sometimes, ya just gotta know when to let things be.

Mr. Intel, I don't feel so good. In the comments, GN said they would also cover idle power at some point within the next few months, which might be a bit more interesting.

Coraline (2009). I liked it a lot more on a second watch than I did on my first watch. The structure of the film still feels a bit wonky to me (and the film still kinda but not totally feels like it was just an "it was all a dream" sort of film), but I was more O.K. with that on a second watch.

and this is why you don't talk about playoffs before you're actually in them

I'm not seeing how that makes him more valuable than the quarterback throwing to him. No quarterback, no catches, which are tough circumstances to win an award called the "most valuable player". Again, it's not the most outstanding player award: an offense can run through a QB or a RB (or at least it used to be able to in the past for the latter), but it can't really for a WR or TE outside of some truly outstanding circumstances that don't really feel possible in the modern game, so I'm not seeing how either of them could ever win an MVP. It's the (current) nature of the game that makes QBs inherently more valuable. Don Hutson won it back-to-back in '41 and '42, but he was half his QB's entire production in both years and he was considered one of the league's best safeties on defense as well, so that makes a little more sense.

That really depends on what you consider the MVP to be. It's never been "most outstanding player" (which is more fulfilled by Offensive Player of the Year, and which I would bet is won either by Hill or maybe Christian McCaffrey), and I don't really see how a WR could ever be more valuable than the QB throwing to him. But "most valuable" is not really the criteria used to award it either, clearly, as that's just about impossible to figure out given that you can't realistically evaluate a QB or RB without their surrounding talent heavily factoring into it. Heck, even a WR is dependent on the QB throwing to them, who is dependent on their line keeping them upright to throw it to them, and having other WRs and RBs that can draw defensive attention so they're not just constantly blanketed sure makes their job easier as well. I don't know what a WR would need to do in order to win MVP, but I don't think Hill will have done it this season, and I wouldn't be able to call him more valuable than at least a handful of QBs myself.

Cowboys like to beat on bad teams and then get beat on by good teams. Does this mean the Cowboys aren't doing that anymore, or does it just mean the Eagles were bad all along? It's a pretty crap year for MVP, going to be either Tua, Dak, Hurts, or Purdy without it being very clear whom yet: none of them have a particularly good case, and there isn't even a running back having a fantastic year like Adrian Peterson or Derrick Henry of yesteryears. I'm kind of just assuming that whoever ends up the #1 seed in the NFC is probably going to get it, unless they all look weak down the stretch and Tua closes out the year really well. Dak Prescott possibly winning an MVP just seems wacko to me, but them's the breaks in a bad offense year. Packers may make the playoffs, which seems unthinkable after such a horrid mid-season stretch. We'll see. I would say that the NFC seems top-heavy, and yet I don't really believe in anyone besides the 49ers, who will probably be the ones that get the #1 seed.

Inside Out (2015). As a generally committed Pixar hater, I'll have you know that the only Pixar film that I really like is WALL-E. Okay, and A Bug's Life is enjoyable, and I suppose Monsters Inc. and all the Toy Storys are all roughly equally just okay...but I didn't like Cars, I didn't like Ratatoullie, I didn't like Brave, or Finding Nemo, or either of the Incredibles, or Up, or Turning Red, or Monsters University...and yes, I've actually seen all of these and I think a couple of others, and heck, I even watched some of these during my own childhood, so if I didn't like them as a kid or as an adult, you should know that I'm pretty serious about it. But I'll have you know that I am a big, emotionally underdeveloped baby...which I am sure everyone already knows, and also that I loved Inside Out, and I made a mistake waiting so long to watch it. I am sorry, past myself. It may or may not be in my top 50 films of all time pursuant to watching it again sometime and confirming my feelings towards it (not that that really means much, it's not exactly a super prestigious list seeing as it's like half animated films of various kinds in the first place). Also, I am sure that I knew it was a Pixar film in the past which is why I didn't go out of my way to watch it back then, but right before watching this, I had thought it was a Disney and not Pixar film, and I only learned after finishing it that it was in fact Pixar, and so I had eggs on my face doubly when I realized the horrible truth of the matter. Also, here are some short write-ups of some other films I watched over the past week-ish that don't matter nearly as much to me and in fact I almost cut them out of the post entirely because this post should really be about Inside Out, but since I already wrote them before watching Inside Out, I'm just going to dump them in this here spoiler where nobody will read them:

Sling Blade (1996). Recommended to me by someone, I didn't read anything about it before starting: I heard Billy Bob Thornton do his ridiculous voice and I was like "oh gosh, I'm not going to be able to do this". Completely wrong, it was a wonderful little movie. Utterly predictable in broad strokes (I knew what the ending was going to be within like 15 minutes), but it's the kind of film where that's totally okay and in fact probably preferred over doing something unexpected and unfitting. It also helps when you have a child actor play a main character and do really great, especially for a film like this.

What announcing retirement does to a guy.

Cowboy Bebop: The Movie AKA Knockin' on Heaven's Door. Which I think is the also name of a Neon Genesis episode. Sorry, I actually meant "Cowboy Bebop: The Movie: Knockin' on Heaven's Door: The End of Cowboy Bebop" (...although from what I read, this movie actually occurs between episode 22 and 23 of the show even though it came out years later, so not really). I read a comment that suggested this is basically a really long normal episode that treats itself a little more seriously but without any of the horrid melodrama of the main series' central story...and I thought what are the chances that someone who dislikes the show ends up liking the movie? Probably not great. But then I considered that maybe it'll be a reverse of Escaflowne, where I love the movie but hate the TV show! Yeah, fat chance, but whatever, I'll just turn it off if I need to. Strange thing about that thought: I specifically thought of it well before I started watching, and then as I did start to watch it...well, speaking of Escaflowne, this Cowboy Bebop movie sure looks a lot like the Escaflowne movie. I paused it to find out that the Escaflowne movie was a joint production between Sunrise and BONES released in 2000, and this Cowboy Bebop movie was...a joint production between Sunrise and BONES released in 2001. Hmm. Well, this film is more or less exactly what that comment I read said it was. Here's the really weird thing: I quickly found myself enjoying the film, actually caring about what happened, laughing at most of the humor, and I even paid attention during the action scenes. The film did feel just a little bit wobbly at points, but I didn't ask myself too many questions while watching, and as a whole, it was fairly compelling and I very much wish the show had been more like it. Intertwine the serious and the silly better, slow everything down a little, make it all just a tad more tethered to reality instead of almost always doing that annoying "nothing you're watching really matters because we're not being sincere" tone, have our characters actually do things beyond just the pointless action and the annoying smarm...and suddenly, I enjoy it. Wow! It's like magic. Now I'm almost tempted to go watch the rest of the show...but I think like the eventually cancelled first season of Ranma 1/2 that I very much enjoyed in direct contrast to the not-cancelled rest of Ranma 1/2 that I very much did not, it might be better to just let it be. A reverse Escaflowne indeed.

I never liked co-op (either with PCs or NPCs) in the Souls game for this: having two players either trivializes a boss (by just playing off the other with forcing frequent aggro switches, thereby giving piles of free hits), or...the boss is one of them whirlwindy/AoE types and everything just quickly becomes an absolute cluster. Neither ever really resulted in very satisfying outcomes to me. but even after watching the whole thing, he still failed to convince me to play it

Trump was our great 'coming out of the closet' moment - for grievances, for retribution, for ignorance, fear, hate, and intolerance. That phenomenon isn't even strictly limited to him and his, as those on the opposite side of the aisle have obviously become more hardened themselves in response. But people don't easily give up on their icons and their heroes, those that made them who they are now, who finally represented them and who gave them a voice: we're in this for the long haul and it's bewildering that so many of these experts can't seem to realize that.

majestic is saying that it's a roddy, cloddy, stupid idea. I can tell from some of the words and from seeing quite a few sarcastic posts in my time.

Story, not plot, and I was talking about it specifically in the context of answering questions like "who am I?" and "why should I care?" (among others, like "who are all these characters and what's up with them?" - I can confidently say that Dark Souls answered that stupendously more effectively than Nioh for me, even if I never quite fell in love with all the weirdo characters in Dark Souls as many other players apparently did). You can make most any story sound fine if you just boil it down to some bulletin plot points, but what actually matters is the overall execution of all the smaller elements into a cohesive and compelling story, and Nioh's was ghastly and I'd have preferred it if the entire thing had been completely excised from the game. Now, it probably would've only pushed my rating of the game from like a 3/10 to maybe a 4 or 4.5/10, but that's pretty significant improvement on the totality of a crap sandwich that was Nioh, and it would have taken it out of "games I've least enjoyed playing of all time" territory.

legal expert maybe, political expert perhaps not so much

Not sure if I could possibly disagree more with the thrust of this statement: I will take a game (or movie) not even attempting something 11/10 times over trying and being miserably bad at it. Not trying to do something means you can put your effort and focus towards something you actually do well instead of bringing the whole product down with your sorry excuse for [element]. Dark Souls doesn't have much of anything in the way of a main plot (and the little that is there is fairly nebulous and relies on some creative interpretation by way of the player), so I would agree it is fair to ask yourself questions like "who is my character", "what exactly are we trying to accomplish and why", and "so why should I care"...but I can personally tell you that having to ask yourself those questions and not being able to immediately come up with answers is a hell of a lot better than the games that give terrible answers to those questions and destroy my interest with a bad story that actively distracts me from the things I do think are good (or could be good if not for the bad elements). Playing as a silent protagonist is infinitely preferable over playing as someone whom I wish I could throw off the nearest cliff. Speaking of protagonists... Remember, I'm the person that very nearly quit Dark Souls II at the character creator because I didn't like any character I tried to make...and actually did quit Hogwarts Legacy at the character creator for the same reason, . Having to look at and listen to a total nonce to whom I have share zero affinity or connection to for a whole game will not (or rather cannot) be tolerated on my part, even if I only see them just from the back, .

they need a new cover image for the game on the steam store because i saw that crap months back and put it on my mental blocklist within approximately .2 seconds hope it's better than nioh, which is one of the worst games i've ever played to the end for a legion of reasons and is some pretty concrete evidence for why indirect storytelling is usually better - direct storytelling by game developers (particularly within the action genre) tends to score highly on being overly simple, annoyingly distracting, incompetent, and/or downright embarrassing

Feels like "better" will largely depend on which you happened to experience and enjoy first, though that's not universally true (for example, I strongly prefer the book version of Peter Pan even though I watched Disney's adaptation a number of times in the couple of decades preceding me reading the book). A few of my favorite movies are adapted from books, but I watched the movies before reading the books and so I'm biased when I say I very much prefer the movie adaptations (e.g. Perfect Blue and The Lord of the Rings films - the latter of which I have the distinction of reading all of in spite of the fact that I quite dislike Tolkien's prose for those books).