Zoraptor

They had a fight about whether to use the British or French spelling. One of the few times the French won vs the British. Yet somehow it's positively beautiful compared to the MiG-31. Post 70s Interceptors are just plain ugly. (OTOH, if I ever win a ludicrous amount on lotto I would pay pretty much anything for the Su-47 prototype. And if [museumname/ VKS/ whoever] doesn't want to give it up Sukhoi can build me another one)

I've seen a lot of people saying they needed more episodes, but in these circumstances I cannot really agree. They probably did in the absolute sense, but I wouldn't be confident that we'd get better out of an extra 2 hours rather than just more of what we got. It really did look like a badly managed project where the wheels fell off completely at the end, and they tend to expand their crappiness to fill all available time. OK, there was covid, but end of the day if a builder builds a house and it falls down in a week you don't care that he was going through a divorce or whatever; you care that the house fell down. And maybe that your neighbours builder, also going through a divorce, managed to build a decent house despite that. End of the day they decided that Stepin and the warder bond which becomes important in probably 2 seasons time was worth half an episode instead of more immediately relevant world building, or giving the main characters five minutes each of character development or whatever. There's nothing to say that we would not simply have got 2 more hours of such writing genius. And they did so little effective world building with the time they had... The main issue they have is how much better Witcher did in similar covid circumstances and, supposedly, with less budget. There have been some issues with it so far (I've not seen ep8 yet) but it's night and day on apparent quality, use of time and world building, and a significant step up still on script and storyline.

It's easy for me since I don't habitually get Prime, I just won't resub after The Expanse finishes. I have to admit though that I have a fair bit of morbid curiousity about just how bad it can get. If it were free I'd probably watch it casually for a laugh. And speaking of The Expanse, and since it's 30 degrees and 85% humidity and I don't want to finish mowing the lawns: Expanse S6e3

No Bruce, I was being sarcastic, it is excellent and you should most definitely watch it. It rates a 110/100 on the globally respected "Do I want to drive Bruce absolutely bonkers via eldritch horror, why yes I do" rating scale. It's entirely possible I have hit the christmas sherry a bit early in a desperate attempt to expunge some recent bad memories.

WoT Ep8 TLDR; hmm. You may substitute your username for Marion. Be warned, watch this episode unprepared and you may end up as the SS equivalent of that gif, I know I did. Rating: 0/0. Because it's impossible to define how bad it was.

I think you have to have at least a little sympathy with the WoT showrunners when it comes to Mat. Some of the stupid decisions were entirely of their own making, but losing the actor must have stuffed things up too, and up to that point he made the best impression of the boys. We don't know if what apparently happens was the original plan or an attempt to rescue the plot, though you'd hope it was forced on them. He was also the most... opaque of the main characters in the early books, with his first pov chapter being a third of the way through book 3?

The issue with the flaws is... hmm. TV and books are different. I'll spoiler it to be safe, though there are no spoilers for anything unaired. As for the leaks, I wouldn't dispute their accuracy, just the interpretation

I'm 99% sure that leak isn't completely true since the actor involved is filming in S2.

There at least they are potentially in good company- Game of Thrones also reshot much of its first episode (though by rumour at least, LotR was almost a total reshoot while a decent amount of the original GoT pilot got used), and replaced a cast member too at the same time as LotR also did.

WoT doesn't really have sex scenes, to be fair to it. Its treatment of sex would be perfectly at home on some typical CW show like the Vampire Diaries, minus Lan's bum and some random bath bristols. Which makes you wonder why they bothered. A lot of productions are hiring intimacy consultants nowadays- it would be the least of this shows problems though, if even a fraction of the local rumours are true. It has an awful, albeit anecdotal, reputation locally. So much so that the local media had a fair bit of difficulty finding people who were upset about production moving to the UK. The distinct impression was that a lot of people didn't want New Zealand associated with it. (the most generally applicable complaint was why Amazon would spend hundreds of millions of dollars piggybacking on successful books and movies, then hire showrunners who hated the source material...)

Only seen the first episode of Witcher S2. I mean honestly it's like the old complaint about public transport; nothing comes along for months then 4 series I'm actually interested in drop inside a few weeks, just when I don't have any spare time. Guess it must be due to the Northern Hemisphere with their silly reversed seasons or something. Got to say though, Witcher managed a better sense of scope literally inside its first two minutes with the Sodden aftermath scene than WoT has managed in 7 entire episodes- you'd think the Battle of Tar Valon was a minor skirmish from its depiction. Plus that Bruxa... in the immortal 'words' of Lews Therin Telamon: hums and tugs earlobe.

The Shannara series was better than it had any right to be. Which isn't saying all that much. You'd not mistake it for anything other than MTV (though iirc they quit scripted dramas between S1&2, orphaning the show), down to the lead actress in S1 being a model who unfortunately couldn't act her way out of a paper bag. She did really look like she was trying though, to be fair to her, as did pretty much everyone involved; and they looked like they were enjoying themselves. Dunno if I could recommend it- at the moment I'd probably have to say it's better than WoT, but then I never read Shannara and didn't expect much, so limited capacity to be disappointed. Fal Dara I thought was OK, the environs were certainly too desolate and I also never envisioned the Blight as shown, though that's not a big deal if it's now more of a fort specifically guarding Tarwin's Gap than a city. The star design of the fort is very renaissance/ musket and pike, but you can justify that as it potentially having to repel 'magic artillery' in the form of dreadlords. On the waygates etc:

Yep, if you've got channelers it's never going to be an out and out medieval equivalent. In some ways the books are also quasimodern- doesn't seem to be much if any illiteracy for example, when maybe 5% of a renaissance society would be literate. But, in most ways and for most people there was very little difference between medieval and renaissance anyway- more or less subsistence agriculture, horse power, horse or water transport, very low education etc. I guess, technically, it's most accurately described as a post apocalyptic society and if you want to get really technical, post apoc twice over. Yeah, it misses the feel except at very occasional points. It also doesn't feel consistent in what it does do- as simple as each person from the same small isolated village having a different accent. I'm sure half the complaints about it looking like cosplay is because of the lack of consistency in anything else, so far as I can tell the costuming is objectively fine. There's no sense of scale. Things are rushed, other things have too much time spent on them. And there's just enough good stuff there (put an example into the spoilers) to make me more disappointed with the stuff that doesn't work.

WoT Ep7 TLDR; it was alright. Main problem, like much of the show, is that it should be better than it is and it's very uneven. Expanse s6e02 TLDR; another perfectly decent episode. Only criticism is that it does feel rushed and a bit linear, but with only 6 episodes I can't see how that's avoidable. Guess the positive alternative take is that they're culling the fat.

They're already shooting S2 of WoT and S3 is pending confirmation. It's not the greatest quality wise but it is a solid top 10 streaming title so is nowhere near Cowboy Beflop.

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

A lot of people absolutely hate that though. Games seem to handle this 'problem' three different ways. 1) Have a hard mechanic that is rigorously enforced and not at all generous. That would be something like the Spirit Meter in Mask of the Betrayer. You have to consider very carefully whether to rest, and how to manage it, and it's pretty easy to mess it up especially at the beginning. You might also include games like Age of Decadence here, where 'urgent' secondary quests fail if you leave a location having not completed them. 2) A soft mechanic, like Fallout 1 (yes, post patch, prepatch it was way more aggressive). You can do all the content within the time limit pretty easily, you only get in trouble if you try farming random encounters or really don't pay attention. 3) Just don't have a time limit, everything stands still until you hit the next plot progression point. The issue from a game design perspective is that people are conditioned to the third option as it's far and away the most popular- while people love having the 'urgency' of being told they are racing against the clock they hate having the urgency of actually racing against the clock, and that's true for a lot of non gaming stuff too. Practically, there's very little difference between post patch F1 and TW3 except not being able to perpetually farm random encounters in F1. You can deal with the monster contract of Shady Sands' radscorpion infestation as easily within the time limit as [Temerian Hamlet's] Nekker infestation; you won't hit F1's time limit unless you're deliberately messing around or trying to defog the entire map on foot. But what was the #1 most hated thing about MotB? The Spirit Meter, by absolute miles. I liked it, but it's pretty clear objectively that a lot of people really, really, didn't; plus I'd still buy MotB if the Spirit Meter wasn't there. When you're making a commercial product those people count, because they won't buy. Hence making the timers a lot more generous in the F1 patch. On the positive side, at least TW3 isn't Bioshock, and point out that the whole thing's gamey then continue on blithely with the exact same gamey stuff.

I wouldn't put it like that, since Geralt is certainly the main character- he's your avatar, he pretty much has to be. I'd probably use the term 'plot driver' instead. In any case the issue with having that as a unique point for TW2 is that Emhyr is extremely similar to Jacques/ Alvin in TW1 in terms of their role in the plot. They're both shadowy figures hiding behind proxies in Prof/ Javed or Letho (with a big assist from the brains trust that is Sìle and Philippa). Of course in TW3 you more or less know who the antagonist is from the start- it's the Wild Hunt, and Interdimensional Elf Hitler is barely more than a caricature at any point. The big difference in TW2 compared to the others plot wise is that you never meet the the antagonist and he actually 'won' the game after about 2 hours game time. The entire 25 hours of game time after that is mitigating the disaster. Whatever you do Emhyr is sitting at the Yaruga laughing at the end, it's only a question of how long and how hard he's laughing for.

Don't think we'll ever get a Dead State 2, but I'd love a similar styled game. Or a similar styled post apoc game. Closest to DS2 was probably Dead Age 2, which was one of the better spur of the moment purchases I've made in the past year- but it's really not all that similar to Dead State.

Both of them are. Though I got it around the wrong way which was which; he is NSA and was working with GCHQ in the UK, she is CIA. (10 years later and that last clause still makes me feel compelled to mention Aiden Gillen)

Good news everybody! Anne Sacoolas, the US diplomat's wife (and active NSA agent, since promoted) who ran over and killed Harry Dunn and fled back to the US rather than face any consequences then tried to ambush his family into forgiving her along with Trump is going to be hit with a wet bus ticket via video conference link to a UK court. Funny thing being that this was the best the UK could get, as a swap for approving Navalny's extradition. How utterly pathetic is that?

Don't know if I'll buy anything (meh, who am I kidding? This being the year that I'd concentrate on my backlog is as much an annual thing as The Year of the Linux Desktop) but them stuffing up the banner advert for it in Galaxy so that it 'launched' in New Zealand 12 hours early was so very typically GOG.

Expanse S6 (though only really spoilers for S5) WoT Ep6 and book spoilers

I have played it, and was completely unaware of any differences- which I guess is actually a pretty good sign, for a (free) remaster. Might have been a little more unstable, but it was like 2 crashes in a 30 hour game so nothing extreme.