majestic

I looked through a list of games released this year and realized I played very few of them, and of those only two for any meaningful stretch of time: Sunless Skies: Joined its predecessor insofar as that I still haven't finished a playthrough by achieving my chosen goal, which of course was The Truth - how could anyone possibly pick otherwise? Alas, it seems as if the Truth is still out there. Sekiro: Was fairly straightforward for a From Software game. As such it's less... burdened by an insane fanbase glorifying the narratives failures of the other Souls games as fantastic storytelling. Superb gameplay, fun glitches, great vertical movement. Decent choice for Game of the Year. Special mention goes to Anthem which I played for a bit with my Origin Access subscription. It was fun for a while, actually, but barely more than a proof of concept. What a waste.

Color me orange and call me Sunkist... this week's The Mandalorian was actually decent. Who knew using a few semi-developed characters and having them interact would prove to be more interesting entertainment than a bunch of enemies of the week. It's a pity it took the show 7 episodes to get to this point. Still don't care for the implication that baby Yoda's species has some innate super control over their force prowess. It diminishes Luke's interactions with Yoda.

I'm not sure what your problems are here, guys. I just realized how wrong I was. Rian Johnson is a cinematic genius. The point of The Last Jedi was, quite frankly, exactly what Kylo Ren said to Rey: The Empire, your parents, the Resistance, the Sith, the Jedi - let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That's the only way to become what you are meant to be. It's just that I thought for a while Kylo was talking to Rey, but no. Rey wasn't even an author insert like Mary Sues usually are. No, Rey was there for us as audience. Since TLJ killed the past for me - i.e. freed me of any attatchments I had to Star Wars as an entertainment intellectual property, I could just thoroughly enjoy Rise of Skywalker and bask in its utter and complete brilliance, except for a bit at the very end where which I thought didn't work as well as everything else. This was quite frankly truly impressive and it wouldn't have been possible without The Last Jedi. It's not easy, but I'm not afraid to admit that I was wrong. That was money well spent. Oh, and yeah. I'm only somewhat facetious here. The disconnect TLJ caused truly made me appreciate this one in the same way I enjoyed watching 6 Underground. It's so bad it's good. Especially the end where, quite frankly, nothing makes sense. Nothing about the entire ending makes any sense. It's glorious.

Congratulations TN.

This week's Mandalorian episode can serve as a pretty decent showcase for various issues and a decent thing (no, really). First of all, Bill Burr as mercenary guest star making meta-fun at both Stormtrooper accuracy and Gungans? Thanks, but no thanks. That's so distracting it killed by suspension of disbelief (and that's somewhat hard to do). Secondly, what's up with those terrible Twi'Lek costumes? Fan clubs have higher standards than that. Jeez. On the other hand the ending of the episode shows that you can set something in the Star Wars universe, whip out a flight of X-Wings and not have it be pandering fanservice. How? It just needs to make sense in-universe.

The first few moments when I watched the Pixel's trailer I was hooked. Such a ridiculous concept, somewhat similar to Galaxy Quest just with video games. Imagine my disappointment when it became clear that it'll be an Adam Sandler film. Bah.

Thanks guys, but I've read almost the entire Star Wars expanded universe (Legends these days), so there's not much that could possibly scare me. As far as Sanderson's and Brian Herbert's sub-par sequels go, how could they possibly be worse than 50 Shades of Grey?

Wow, episode 5 of The Mandalorian really cranked up the fanservice. Which is good because it made me immediately go back to the intro of the Rogue One Half in the Bag:

While not direclty video game news related @jph_anderson managed to finish his Witcher analysis video and has troubles posting it on YouTube. Anyone else excited for a full analysis with a runtime of over nine hours? I sure am. Here's a smaller one:

Double post if your wife is abusing you.

I spent a good while of the day reminiscing. Which is something that I do somewhat frequently but it seldomly affects my mood this negatively. Usually it's just a bit of nostalgia mixed in with an increasingly intense notion that maybe the old farts actually had it right and things really were better in the past. So I'm going to tell you guys a story. You can stop reading here if you don't like stories about, well, "the one that got away" but if you stick around you'll get to call me a stupid moron at the end. Well, possibly. And no, it's not going to be a friend zone story. At least... not a traditional one. I'm also not looking for any validation or a pat on the back or anything, I'm trying forum posting as a sort of coping mechanism (now that I type that out this sounds ridiculous). Since that got a lot longer in writing than I thought it would I'll just put it in spoiler tags.

Since we're kind of doing Rammstein covers:

Wow, I should really stay away from this thread when I'm not in the brightest of moods.

I see I failed to mention that I used my November's free Prime E-Book on The Goblet of Fire and am now reading The Order of the Phoenix. And dear god, Harry (w)angsts even more in the book than he does in the film, which was already annoying enough.

Well Kevin Sorbo disagrees: Not that I would know anything about bourbon. I only drink beer and very occasionally fruit brandy, and the latter two only in very small amounts. I I've had only a handful of shots in the past 10 years. The last time I got drunk doing shots was... well, let's say, not very pleasant. Not even sure it was fun while it lastet, my recollection of the night is a bit spotty and it involved at least one bottle of extremely disgusting 60% ABV raspberry schnapps.

Well the quality is terrible, but it's the best one on YT.

Time for a new picture, today's lunch:

Would you like to buy some bootstraps?

I don't know, I thought the episode was half an hour of nothing much and The Beskar forging scene bothered me a bit (much like GoT's reforging of Ice). Cast iron has a higher carbon content (that's what makes it, uhm, castable) and while becoming exceptionally hard won't be able to withstand impacts all that well and simply shatter, not something you want in an armor or a melee weapon. That can be seen in how a cast iron skillet can't even stop a .22 caliber round. Okay, I get it, it's Mandalorian iron and not real life iron and can have any number of properties that still make it viable armor after melting it down and casting it, but that doesn't explain why you would need to cast and forge it into shape. That's just... weird.

What's up with people not knowing how to use the comparative and superlative forms of adjectives corretcly? Nothing can be worst than anything else. Literally! Heh. Literally... Anyway, dear lord, what the hell did I just watch?

Well technically peanuts aren't nuts and real beer doesn't contain wheat so you should be good. Kidding, kind of. Always sucks when you learn you're not supposed to consume something you enjoy.

Finally had a chance to watch Dolemite Is My Name. Eddi Murphy does a hell of a Rudy Ray Moore impression, but there's really only one original. Great film and a superb cast. Great work even from Wesley Snipes, but I'm presuming he just played himself, considering how much of an entitled diva he's supposed to be on set.

The title's wrong, that line isn't from Disco Godfather, but anyway...