PK htiw klaw eriF
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Posts posted by PK htiw klaw eriF
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8 hours ago, majestic said:
The Boys, season four, episode four: We're On A Road To Nowhere (and going pretty hard!)
The episode certainly was a banger, but not in the good way. The plot of the episode was a disjointed mess that looks like they let the creative team of Star Trek: Into Darkness write four episodes, film them without second takes and then edit them into one episode's worth of runtime. Things happen with no prior setup, a lot of things just happen off-screen that would have been much better if actually shown and characters make decisions because the plot demands it, not because they make sense, the worst of which was Butcher getting Frenchie to do something instead of doing it himself, which he had ample of time and opportunity to do while standing right next to the objective (before going back to Frenchie) because one of the plot points of the episode needs Frenchie to be hurt by a supe.
Frenchie is the victim of this a lot in this season, there is also the utterly unnecessary tension between him and Kimiko over secrets they both keep. Guys, it's two seasons too late for that.
So, uhm, yeah. There's also this wholly unnecessary attempt at giving Homelander a tragic backstory to explain why he's so messed up.
It was still fun to watch if only for the performance of the cast, but it sure is beginning to drift into the territory where my suspension of disbelief is begining to come apart at the seams, not just having a few frayed edges (like, well, the ultimate problem the series had ever since the end of season one, i.e. why doesn't Homelander just kill everyone; for which there actually is an explanation attempt in this episode).
Definitely one of the sloppier episodes.
The big one for me is Annie beating the **** out of Firecracker in front of a live audience for revealing she had an off-screen abortion. It's just very forced, comically so. For the life of me I can not see that this is what would send Annie over the edge, it's just plot induced stupidity.
I will say Firecracker being a pedophile is another one of those things that is just real life. Despite calling anyone who doesn't want to kill the gays groomers, a frightening number of Christian conservatives and other kinds of reactionaries have charges or accusations of sexual abuse of minors. Many such cases.
It was dumb that Butcher sent Frenchie in, no doubt. Butcher clearly has no problem doing B&E on his own and it seems like they just wanted Frenchie to get hurt so he could have drama with his bf....whose family he murdered. I dunno, I think maybe Frenchie should be killed off at this point because he just doesn't do anything but look very sad.
Homelander going home was better because Anthony Starr can chew that scenery. But there's only so long we can see him have a slow descent into madness without him actually hitting rock bottom. Should have lifted powering up the boys from the comics tbh
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14 minutes ago, majestic said:
I was goaded into watching a video by The Critical Drinker while writing my posts about Star Trek: Picard. It took about five minutes of him making a semi-decent point about why it is bad until he came to the conclusion it is because diversity and because that woman admiral was allowed to yell at Picard. I stopped watching and had YouTube never recommend me a video of his again. Picard was bad for a myriad of reasons, that old, cantankerous admiral yelling at him certainly was not one of them.
Gee, unfriendly and unsympathetic female admirals in Star Trek, what a novelty. Must be this woke crap.
It's a shame, because "The Critical Drinker" sounds like a good name for a ****tail channel. I guess that doesn't pay as much as "Star Trek: Picard CUCKS Riker" or whatever 20 minute rants they can **** out.
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On 6/18/2024 at 8:13 AM, kanisatha said:
We'll see about DA4 (the trailer being a trailer and not necessarily representative of how the game will be), but I disagree about BG3 and DA4 being the same in cinematics. There is no RPG out there, including upcoming games, that even comes close to BG3's extent of cinematics. Larian themselve have boasted about the extent of cinematics in their game, claiming a whopping 175+ hours of cinematics that they recorded for their game (and that was before all the post-release updates and patches). And therein lies the real issue, because I'm not opposed to some cinematics in a AAA RPG. It's that BG3 has gone so far into cinematics that for me effectively the game is far too much like watching a movie than playing a game.
That 175+ hours includes all permutations and counts dialogue scenes as cinematics, there aren't 175+ hours of cutscenes. Counting dialogue scenes there's probably 10-20 hours of cinematics in a playthrough, discounting dialogues I'd be surprised if there was more than an hour total cutscenes stretched out over a playthrough (which took me 85+ hours, not counting reloads or reroll). On that BG3 playthrough I can confidently say I spent more time fighting or exploring more than I did talking or watching cutscenes and it certainly felt different than watching a movie.
I'd think a gameplay trailer should be at least somewhat representative of how a game will play, and based on that DAV's gameplay trailer it looks like Bioware is going for the cinematic cutscene and cinematic dialogue heavy games they've been doing consistently since Mass Effect 2. There's nothing wrong with that, for me at least the bigger problem with DAV is less that it's set up in the same way as ME3 or DAI but in that it's doubled down on action combat in a way that doesn't look particularly interesting.
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15 hours ago, Wormerine said:
ZA-UM continues to be a mess, with Disco Elysium spinoff canceled, and more people fired. I don't think ZA-UM owners are helping their case, at least as far as publc perception is concerned. Have no clue how their legal battle with Disco Elysium creative leads progresses.
This is what happens when you let The Ultraliberals run things.
On 6/14/2024 at 1:37 PM, kanisatha said:I also feel, very strongly, that given the many, many core elements of the game (TB combat, all the cinematics and voice acting, the whole tadpole system, origin companions, to name the main ones), that I detest, it is reasonable for me to not pay anywhere near full price for the game. So I'll wait and get the game when it is around 50% off, give or take.
That's cool and all, but it's perplexing to see the bolded as a core element that you detest in BG3 given your excitement for Dragon Age, a series that has been very much about cinematics and full va since 2011 and where the gameplay trailer for the upcoming title in the series is at least a quarter cinematics.
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3 hours ago, majestic said:
The Boys Season 4: Satire Is Over
So, the first three episodes are out, and one thing I took away from this is that, in the five years the season ran so far, the world has gone to hell in a handbasket in such a way that The Boys stopped being satire and is now just a pale reflection of actual events, just with superheroes. Still pretty entertaining, but then... I was one of the two people on the planet who thought season two was better than season three, so take my opinion with an unhealthy dose of sodium chloride.
Unfortunately you're not wrong, The Boys very much stopped being satire and just being depiction (with superheroes) a while ago. Perhaps the most unrealistic thing is that the feds are trying to put a stop to supe nonsense...though that can largely be explained as business interests from the existing military industrial complex (as it was in the comics).
But it is a good show and so far is holding up. I think it is how adaptations should be done, in the sense that the material is adapted both for the format and to update references, because hot damn does the Vought Cinematic Universe as the big superhero thing made by Vought hit closer to home than Vought comic books would.
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Star Trek: Discovery s1
It doesn't have the episodic highs of individual TOS or TNG and didn't stick with things long enough to compete with DS9, all things considered it's like any number of CW shows with a premium channel level of freedom to curse and show....weird lizard people Klingon nips. Not particularly impressive and feels both too short and too long.
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I still can't get it to work because I don't have time to play mod wack-a-mole. But I did watch a 30 minute video that showed off the archetypes, so here are my thots.
Kinetic Sharpshooter doesn't seem to have much synergy with base kineticist and has to pay for Archery feats. It doesn't gather power and instead pays burn up front. I'd have to get around to actually checking it out, but right now I'm not optimistic or very interested.
Arcane Deceiver isn't actually an Arcanist, it just hangs out there. It loses everything from that class, including spell casting. It's a 6th level spontaneous Charisma caster who draws from a very limited spell list and has a selection of subclasses that I'd say are on the same tier of feature as the sorcerer bloodlines. Notably it doesn't get bonus spells from attribute scores, doesn't get to metamagic their merged spells, and can't merge spellbooks or do the Lore Master import. I think it may be able to attempt a bluff check to not use a spell slot or something depending on subclass, but I'd rather just have more spells. Perhaps the most surprising is that the fused spell interface doesn't appear to be that much of a cluster ****, the only thing is that attack roll spells seem to be an auto-hit instead of using the roll, which means less Arcane Trickster shenanigans until at least level 14 (with respec).
Mantis Zealot has some cool powers, but it's very dependent on a specific new weapon type so will be tied to how good those are. Which I have no idea of right now.
Bladebound gets a pet....at level 12. Not sure if the pet takes up a slot or works as a summon. Not going to knock off Arcane Rider, Scion, or Sword Saint.
Living Grimoire gets locked to their book (mechanically a cold iron light mace with scaling +× bonuses) and uses Intelligence instead of Wisdom.
Chelaxian Diva gains some sonic damage abilities and can increase their Bard song DC, but most impressive is a song with a 60 foot aoe that is haste but gives bonuses that are a fifth of bard level. Doesn't lose anything particularly great either.
Inciter is an upgrade. You get sneak attack and rogue talents and can share some of that via inspired rage. On top of that you can debuff enemies in the area of inspired rage.
Titan Fighter is designed to dual wield 2-handers. You "lose" half the feats to get the Ranger's 2-handed combat style, which means you can do dual wielding without investing in Dex. Maybe it gives Mutation Warrior a run, but it could also be a decent dip to get Sword Saints the ability to use a fauchard in one hand.
Drunken Master can't be Chaotic or worship the Chad god but has an ability called "Cayden's Trick". 0/10, buggy as hell. Some abilities seem cool and now you have a way to use all the booze instead of bulk selling.
Sable Company Marine is another straight upgrade. It gets a better pet earlier and that alone makes it a good dip. You have to wait 2 levels until you grab favored enemy, at which point it progresses normally.
Bloodseeker loses all Slayer Talents to grab special magic powers (most of them copy existing spells). It also gets a bite attack and has a capstone that gives +6 Profane bonuses to Str, Dex, and Int. Not bad, but it's locked to evil and most of the spells are best spent on buffs.
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1 hour ago, kanisatha said:
But as I've said often, I was one of the first to join the Larian BG3 foum after the game was announced, and have been very diligent in readings posts there and very active in discussing the game. And I have also watched a lot of hours of BG3 streaming. But whatever.
That's a crazy amount of time spent on a game you'll never play. I don't even spend that much time on things I like.
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39 minutes ago, ShadySands said:
Downloading now, let's see how stable it is.
I think that's gonna depend on what mods you use.
If you do get it wo work and have the inclination, let us know what you think about the new archetypes.
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44 minutes ago, kanisatha said:
I can very easily say exactly this sort of thing about BG3 and its cast of characters. <shrug>
For me, Varric is a character I absolutely love and consider one of the best-written characters in all of fantasy gaming. There are also several other characters from across the three DA games I love. But there are no characters, not a single one, from BG3 that I would consider well-written or worth remembering/caring about.
Well you haven't played BG3 so that's not a surprise.
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I've also had similar login issues, both on mobile and PC.
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17 hours ago, Sarex said:
It looks plain bad to me. Don't know who their audience is for this and which player base are they hoping to catch with the Dragon Age name.
I'm in the position where I wish it was bad, it's so generic that I remember next to nothing about the gameplay a day later. I remember that the player is some kind of ninja doing superhero flick stuff and is being guided by a depressed middle-aged alcoholic dwarf to fight an uncanny looking albino twink elf, but there's just nothing specific that is interesting to recall. Maybe superhero fatigue has spilled over onto videogames that ape that kind of maximalist action spectacle.
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It looks like Dragons Dogma.
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5 hours ago, Sarex said:
So safe to say that Bioware no longer exists.
4 hours ago, MrBrown said:I guess we'll wait a couple of days to see what gameplay looks like, but it looks like Bioware is doing Bethesda's thing of having one type of game put into different settings across different series. Retrospectively I don't think any Dragon Age is particularly great and that generally Mass Effect has a stronger stable of titles, even so I don't think that porting that kind of gameplay to a more melee centric setting is going to work particularly well.
Also, for a developer that pivoted to creating "cinematic experiences", it's kinda funny just how unimpressive Bioware's cinematics are.
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10 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:
Funnily, the opening of the film (i.e. the king's...uh, play, or whatever) was probably my least favorite part of the film, mainly because I was wondering what the hell was going on and just what I was getting into. I think if I re-watched the opening, I'd like it a lot more now, but it was a bad way to start the film for me. Initial impressions can be difficult to shake, so it's further credit to the film (...and the king) that it did.
I enjoyed it because it was a well executed scene but moreso because it really hammers in the disconnect between the decadent nature of the court and the real effect of its politics. XIII could not give less of a **** over the real people who are going to suffer from the policies he enacts so long as he gets to do his silly king stuff, and his Richelieu also doesn't really care that his king is pretty much the exact kind of guy he should despise so long as he gets to do what he wants. That's pretty analogous to a lot of what we're dealing with right now, with some politicians being a much less fun mirror of Louis XIII and some of their administrators being more overtly fascist versions of Richelieu.
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I somehow got roped into watching Discovery with my dad. Maybe I'm just built different, but I don't think it's outright horrible like Top Gun: Maverick or VillenDune. For me it's more like the Marvel movies, exceedingly generic CW-tiwr SciFi that nostalgia bait and uses kewl imagery to sucking you into sitting through hollow technobabble nonsense. It's like if they set the most forgettable episodes of any of the old Trek shows in the middle of the Dominon War. It leaves me feeling nothing at all, neither hatred nor the sense of wonder that I got watching the best of TOS/TNG/DS9. Do not reccomend, will probably continue watching because my Dad has very questionable taste (he loves The Phantom Menace because of the pod racing, I am not joking).
Perhaps the one thing I found interesting, Klingon supremacist cult fearing assimilation, gets quickly squandered to make the Klingons classic baddies who don't really believe in anything but power. The redesign also looks awful.
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12 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:
The Devils (1971)...by the ever incorrigible Ken Russell.
It's difficult to put into words exactly what makes Russell's films so...is "on-putting" a word? It should be: it's basically the same as "off-putting", insofar as that there's something bizarre and disconcerting experienced, except that it's interesting and entertaining instead of being unpleasant or tiresome as you would rightfully expect given the content. The man has this inexplicable superpower of making films that don't really have any right to be good...exactly that. I would say this is his best film of the ones I've watched, and I was rather enthralled by both characters, story, themes, and performances, though I think I still ultimately liked The Boyfriend a little more for subjective reasons. The Exorcist is widely remembered as one of the best films of all time while The Devils was heavily censored and disavowed by the media: it perhaps seems a strange difference in reactions, given how many similarities you might notice between the two and that they were released at close to the same time (1971 vs. 1973). I suppose The Devils has a more...dual nature, in that the audience has to grapple with the fact that it walks a very fine line in being comedic, nearly parodical, in how outrageous (though never unintelligible) it gets - in grave contrast to its all too real messaging on the harrowing and dangerous intersection of politics, religion, and human nature, among a number of other things. I could see that offending many political and religious sensibilities where The Exorcist didn't, as The Exorcist always played it straight, always treated the religious and supernatural elements very seriously while keeping any commentary it might have on them quiet enough, while The Devils most certainly did not.
On the other hand, I wouldn't dream of The Devils giving up on its funnier, more sociopolitical side if it meant the film forsaking the scene where a carefree and whimsical King Louis XIII lounges around in the raving throng of "demonically possessed" nuns. Who else is going to dispel the demons from all of them with an ancient vial of Jesus' blood inside of a relic container before impishly revealing that the box was in fact completely empty, causing the possessions to resume as if they hadn't ever paused? I was quite saddened the king didn't show up at either the trial or the stake burning, but I suppose His Majesty's delightful presence there would've rather undercut the film, so it was probably all for the best.
"Don't look at me. I'm beautifuuuul. I'm beautifuuuuuuul." and Louis XIII doing a drag performance has been seared into my mind since I saw the film.
I think that what makes it work so well for me is how I went in expecting somethings like the Excorcist but moar lewd and instead got a substantially better version of The Crucible. Frankly what I found disturbing wasn't the nun orgy but just how relevant a 50 year old film about events 4 centuries ago feels. Maybe I'm just too brain damaged by Evangelion.
7 hours ago, Amentep said:Speaking of Ken Russell, I saw Lair of the White Worm recently for the first time. As is often true with Russell's films its a better film than its reputation would lead you to believe, even if I think Russell's final joke at the end doesn't really pay off.
I think it's a really solid horror that manages to straddle the line between being too much of a joke to taking itself so seriously it disappears up it's own ass.
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53 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:
For state charges, Florida defers to the state where the convicted criminal felon has been criminally convicted as a convicted criminal felon...criminally, as to whether they're allowed to exercise their right to vote as a convicted criminal felon as a result of their criminal felon conviction. So in this particular case, Donald Trump the convicted criminal felon would be allowed to vote, as a convicted criminal felon, in Florida, because his criminal felon conviction occurred in New York, where criminally convicted felons are still allowed to vote with criminal felon convictions. Woof, sorry, that was a mouthful, but I couldn't think of any other possible way to word it.
Well that's what I get for making a joke without knowing Florida law.
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I guess felons are gonna get the right to vote in Florida.
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16 minutes ago, Sarex said:
You won't be disappointed with whichever of these you pick. Well except maybe Jojo...
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19 minutes ago, Gorth said:
Based on recommendations, I made myself a list of shows to check out, as in at least watch a few episodes of each (depending on availability). Not necessarily in this order, just cut and past from posts above
Kill la Kill
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders
Bakemonogatari
Code Geass
Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill
Tengen Toppa Gurren LagannORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA
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The ICC clearly only has legitimate jurisdiction over Africa and Russia.
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I Saw The TV Glow (2024)
The film legit made me depressed. A neon draped nightmare of nostalgia that detonates a tactical nuke to the feels. It's perhaps one of the scariest horror films in terms of actually being frightening for the viewer. Could not reccomend more.
Showgirls (1995)
Kyle MacLaughlin's unsettling chin strikes again. It's obsessively horny, glamorous in a gaudy way, and more than a little excessive, just like the myth Vegas has built for itself. Perhaps it's because I'm viewing it almost 30 years later, but the film really feels like it was ahead of it's time in some ways.
Cinema and Movie Thread: coming at you at 24fps
in Way Off-Topic
Posted
I read the Harry Potter books as a kid and they haven't really stuck with me in the way (some) Steven King books did* or Lost Highway, which I credit for breaking my mind when I recorded it by accident and went in completely blind. By the time the last movies dropped I had really lost interest, retrospectively it's worse because not only are the films mostly uninteresting to me, but because the last one started the horrible trend of releasing movies in parts.
JK going far off the deep end doesn't really help either. Even if I was interested in that universe I wouldn't want to be supporting someone that awful. At least Daniel Radcliffe seems cool, and it's hilarious that instead of trying to be a mega-star or whatever he does very weird films/shows and stage plays.
*I guess reading IT when you're around the same age as the Losers Club is going to make it hit a lot closer to home.