esc wrote to All <=-
Anyway, we're watching the HBO series now because I wanted to see how
it differs from the game. We just rewatched episode 3, the one with Ron Swanson (lol).
I forgot how complete that vignette is. Like, it's a story unto itself that takes place in the span of an episode and has more to say than
entire movies or series. Pretty crazy.
First off, holy shit is the game well done. Super immersive. I like the storytelling aspect of it; it's so much better than a button mash shooter.
I am looking forward to the next season. I haven't gotten far in the
game so I've got a ways to go now to see the delta between the show and
the game, but I really forgot what a masterpiece the show is.
Anyone else watch this one?
Anyone else watch this one?
Rolling Stone had a list of the top 100 TV series episodes, and that episode made the list. The only Star Trek episode on the list was TNG's "The Inner Light", a bottle episode like The Last of Us episode. The Majority of the episode takes place on another planet where Picard
lives an entire life as a scientist in a family on a doomed planet that died 1000 years ago. A probe transfers the memories of the people into
his mind and he experiences a life in 40 minutes.
Oddly, another bottle episode that made the list was Dr. Who's "Blink". That was known as a Doctor Who-Light episode, because David Tennant was double-booked. He only appears in one scene in person.
I debated buying yet another game I end up not finishing. But if it's worth it, I may have to take another look!
I did, and loved it. After the last episode, I was kinda angry that I'd probably have to wait like a year or more for another season, tbh. Unfortunately, that comes with the territory when you binge watch a first season of anything and don't really know if there's even going to be another. :)
I knew a bit about it as someone who follows the gaming scene a bit, but
I didn't own a PS3 until like a year ago, so I've never played it, but I definitely hope to one of these days. I did watch the series as it aired, however, and really liked it, as did my partner and pretty much everyone
I know who watched it. Really good shit. I know there are some major events that happen in the second game that may be challenging to the audience when adapted for the season 2 (or 3, or whatever) so I'm definitely excited to see how that goes.
esc wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-
I'll have to look this up, seems interesting.
Also I don't remember that episode of TNG, gonna give it a watch.
As a funny aside, when my wife and I got married, my parents were
staying at this AirBnB in town near a winery. The owner was the actor
who played Kal Durak. I bullshitted with him for a while, he kept
bragging about going to Juliard and showing me all these photos of himself. Such an actor lol.
Oddly, another bottle episode that made the list was Dr. Who's "Blink". That was known as a Doctor Who-Light episode, because David Tennant was double-booked. He only appears in one scene in person.
Y'know, I've never seen a single episode of this show. I should check
it out one of these days. Is it easy to get into?
Y'know, I've never seen a single episode of this show. I should check it out one of these days. Is it easy to get into?
Totally! The trailer for Season 2 is out and it looks interesting. I really like how relatable the characters are and how believable their
arcs are. The main narrative is really cool. I also really enjoy how
there really aren't THAT many zombies...they are pretty few and far between for the most part, and I think they only really exist to push
the character driven narrative. I juxtapose this against The Walking
Dead, where it seems like the idea was to create a neverending zombie apocalypse and just throw a motley crew of misfits in there and watch
them kill each other.
They finished filming season 2 last month and I think it's coming out in January. That's sooner than we think, really. My goal is to wrap up the game prior to the start of the next season. It's really an excellent
game, very immersive, and it makes you think and tugs on your
heartstrings at times. Super cool.
Like I told Nick, just steal the damn game. hehe
Don't buy it, be like me! Steal it! :P
I jailbroke my PS3. It's an original one with full hardware support for
PS1 and PS2 titles. And...I have all of them. muahahaha
Totally! The trailer for Season 2 is out and it looks interesting. I
really like how relatable the characters are and how believable their
arcs are. The main narrative is really cool. I also really enjoy how
there really aren't THAT many zombies...they are pretty few and far
between for the most part, and I think they only really exist to push
the character driven narrative. I juxtapose this against The Walking
Dead, where it seems like the idea was to create a neverending zombie apocalypse and just throw a motley crew of misfits in there and watch
them kill each other.
I didn't really care for that show. My wife loved it lol. I got sick of
the same season happening over and over again.
I jailbroke my PS3. It's an original one with full hardware
support for PS1 and PS2 titles. And...I have all of them.
muahahaha
I don't think I watched a single full episode of The Walking Dead.
Never really interested me, much like zombie apocalypse games, also.
Same thing happened to us with The Blacklist. First two seasons were awesome, then the third season we started noticing a solid
repetitiveness going on. Only difference, really, was going after a different person each episode. I think we started season 4 and after
one or two episodes we stopped watching.
Same here, Andrea loved the walking dead but I didn't get into it,
strange becuase I like zombie movies a lot, but the TV show was just
too much.
I haven't even bothered with it after season 2. My problem with the
whole "binge" watching thing is I get so bored of the show I won't
finish it.
Californication, Dexter, SOA, and I'm sure many more are at the end of season 1 or 2 and I just can't be fucked to finish them.
I haven't even bothered with it after season 2. My problem with the whole "binge" watching thing is I get so bored of the show I won't finish it.
Californication, Dexter, SOA, and I'm sure many more are at the end of season 1 or 2 and I just can't be fucked to finish them.
In Paso, right?
It ebbs and flows. I don't know if there's a list of top episodes to
watch out there, sure there are. Since there were staff changes behind
the scenes and the Doctor is played by several different characters,
you're bound to find a season you like.
I haven't watched the trailer for Season 2 yet because... well, why? I know I'm going to watch it so why spoil anything for myself. *shrug*
I agree with everything you said about Last of Us vs TWD (although a lot of fans of the Last of Us games did complain about the show not having enough zombie action. hehe.) I'm a fan of TWD though - I've literally
seen ALL of it, including all of the numerous spins offs and whatnot,
I mean, I would, but I own it. ;) Not only do I own the PS3 original,
but when I built my girlfriend's PC, her GPU came with a Stream code for the remaster. My only excuse is lack of free time. :/
Meh, I don't buy games very often any more, so it doesn't really matter. Once I got sick of CoD and PubG, I think I've gotten Cyberpunk 2077, Resident Evil: Village, The Quarry, and maybe one or two others.
Kinda hoping they make a new Clancy's: The Division. I enjoyed leveling
up in both 1 and 2, but once all you do is grind shit over and over to find one gear piece, it gets boring. :)
Nice! I don't have time for that shit. lol
I don't think I watched a single full episode of The Walking Dead. Never really interested me, much like zombie apocalypse games, also.
Same thing happened to us with The Blacklist. First two seasons were awesome, then the third season we started noticing a solid
repetitiveness going on. Only difference, really, was going after a different person each episode. I think we started season 4 and after one or two episodes we stopped watching.
All that said, I'll still watch random episodes of The Office,
Superstore, and Modern Family. :)
Question for ya. I actually tried rewatching TNG recently (well, in the past decade or so) and I realized I've become so used to the concept of
a single cohesive narrative in a series that these episodic shows that
you can watch in any order feel a bit weird to me. So TNG was tough to
get back into because that concept of a big narrative being driven
forward with each subsequent episode was missing.
Well shit now I feel bad.
Idk man. I can't get into things that I think drag on and run out of ideas. That's my personal take on TWD, and I don't mean that as an
insult or anything, but I get really frustrated for some reason.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have shows that /had/ an awesome narrative, but they made a lot of money and execs demanded more seasons which ended up filled with nonsense that had no material impact to the show at all, and oftentimes had a lot of things set up with no closure
or delivery at all.
Yes, I'm looking at you, Lost! Goddamn that show had so much potential
but just became a parody of itself.
GoT is another show with all the potential in the world but it turns out the showrunners were lost without GRRM at the helm. What a
disappointment. I can't remember the inflection point where the show
went to absolute shit, but for a time I felt it was the pinnacle.
Wait a sec, I thought TLOU was only playable on real Playstation
hardware. Are you telling me it can be played on a PC!?
I'm too lazy to write a new message. ;) We have the original
PS3 as well with the 60gb HDD. It does PS2 but I never tried
to jailbreak it, is there a specific version of the OS to patch?
I also have a ton of ps1 games I wouldn't mind playing on the
big screen instead of the laptop.
Californication, Dexter, SOA, and I'm sure many more are at the end of season 1 or 2 and I just can't be fucked to finish them.
Sigh, they just don't make 'em like they used to. :)
Does Dr. Who follow the episodic/TNG style or is it more of a linear narrative?
Anyway, we're watching the HBO series now because I wanted to see how it differs from the game. We just rewatched episode 3, the one with Ron Swans (lol).
Idk man. I can't get into things that I think drag on and run out of
ideas. That's my personal take on TWD, and I don't mean that as an
insult or anything, but I get really frustrated for some reason.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have shows that /had/ an awesome narrative, but they made a lot of money and execs demanded more seasons which ended up filled with nonsense that had no material impact to the
show at all, and oftentimes had a lot of things set up with no closure
or delivery at all.
Yes, I'm looking at you, Lost! Goddamn that show had so much potential
but just became a parody of itself.
GoT is another show with all the potential in the world but it turns out the showrunners were lost without GRRM at the helm. What a
disappointment. I can't remember the inflection point where the show
went to absolute shit, but for a time I felt it was the pinnacle.
What'd you think of Cyberpunk 2077?
I was pumped for this game but for some reason the driving makes me feel
so sick. I don't understand it because walking around is fine but as
soon as my character is in a car, I want to vomit. lol.
Everyone was really into RDR2. I keep telling myself I need to give
myself time to get into that one, but for some reason it just doesn't
speak to me the way GTA V did.
To this day, I feel GTA V is as close to perfection as I've seen.
I never really played any Clancy games following Rainbow 6. I'm a bit
out of date. I guess I should give those titles a whirl.
Nice! I don't have time for that shit. lol
Pro-tip - don't have kids! hehe
All that said, I'll still watch random episodes of The Office,
Superstore, and Modern Family. :)
I think comedies kinda get away with that type of stuff. Like, I can
watch any random episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm right now and instantly laugh my ass off.
The Sopranos has stood up amazingly to the test of time. That show is amazing and it's almost a slice of history at this point, where watching
it will really take you back to that late 90s/early 2000s era. It's
pretty cool.
Breaking Bad is a show I feel that was as close to perfection as one can be. I LOVED the ending and think they did an amazing job. I was fearful it'd be another bogus ending but they really did the story and
characters justice.
The Last Of Us just received a rewatch from us over here, and it was awesome. I hope it continues doing well in the next season and after.
Unlike a lot of shows, I feel like TWD is one of those shows that
only gets worse as it goes along. Some people rank the middle
I typically stick it out unless I'm either REALLY disliking it. I
don't really walk out of movies either. That, or I just get
your list except for Californication, which I didn't DISLIKE
(although it is a pretty fucking weird show) but did sort of
eventually drift away from and never finish.
tbh I can't remember what the steps to jailbreaking it were, but it
wan't /too/ bad. Something like putting some data on a USB and then
I LOVED Californication in Season 1. I thought that show had so much
potential. But it devolved from a deep character-driven story into one
full of dick and fart jokes and completely unbelievable bullshit. It
became campy in a way.
Dexter was one my ex loved and so I watched it begrudgingly because we
had a tiny place and there was nowhere else to go. I hated the hell
out of that stupid show lol.
Ha! We're having that issue right now. My SO liked TNG way more than I would have expected, but we just started slogging through DS9 and she keeps asking me if anything happens in this show (which is ironic, since all of the Dominion stuff is a much bigger, serialized plot than any of the original Trek shows had.)
(This is one of the several reasons I'm shocked that they just came out with not one, but three new spin-off shows! Who, besides me, is watching this?!)
I share those frustrations, though for what it's worth, the main TWD ended. It was never totally out of in the weeds like something like X-files or Lost anyway, since it was (loosely) following the comics.
Happens far too often. :/ It feels rare that a show has a relatively
even run and a decent ending.
GoT is a special case. Man, what a disappointment. I don't know if any other show has squandered so much early fanfare, so damn badly.
Yep! They came out with a remaster of the first game ~2 years ago that
is also on PC, although I think the sequel is still exclusive to PlayStation.
Perhaps the only jombie show/movie that i really enjoyed... the fungus thing, has some logic, the virus thing, like in all other franchises,
has not.. for me anyway... :)
I almost started watching Breaking Bad again yesterday, but decided I'd probably end up binge watching it like a zombie for the next 8 hours and had other things to do (like take a nap, LOL). :D
I enjoyed it. However, I didn't veer too far off the storyline, and only did the side missions if they were basically on the way to complete the story. I'm usually not into venturing around doing pointless shit that only raises your game completion stats and doesn't actually give you anything useful in game.
Try taking some dramamine or something for motion sickness? I dunno man, that sucks. I've never had that issue, granted I used to be a sweaty CoD player, and not much in gaming tops that as far as your eyes buggin' out on you. ;)
I have that as well, and couldn't get into it very far, either. It was very slow paced, including the fight scenes (of course, again this is compared to the FPS games I used to play).
Kinda the same with any of the Assassin's Creed games. I loved the first couple, then they got slow paced and boring. Always having to go from
one side of the map to the other, then backtrack, etc.
I suppose once you have the adrenaline pumping on fast paced FPS games, everything else seems to be slow motion in comparison.
I played San Andreas a long time ago, haven't played anything from the franchise since. I suppose I could probably get into the story line much like Cyberpunk 2077, but I haven't really played a game all the way through since Resident Evil: Village. So maybe I'm just losing interest
in general.
Rainbow 6 Seige was a decent game at the time. However, you go back and play it now and you're like "How tf did we deal with these horrendous graphics back then?"
I remember telling my wife that the cordyceps thing is real, and proceeded t show her some YouTube clips of zombie ants. I scared the shit out of her :P
I have that as well, and couldn't get into it very far, either. It was very slow paced, including the fight scenes (of course, again this is compared to the FPS games I used to play).
I played San Andreas a long time ago, haven't played anything from the franchise since. I suppose I could probably get into the story line much like Cyberpunk 2077, but I haven't really played a game all the way through since Resident Evil: Village. So maybe I'm just losing interest
in general.
Looking at my Steam library, it seems all I have is Rainbow 6 Seige and The Division on there. However, I believe The Division 2 wasn't released on steam at the time (maybe it's on there now, idk), so I probably have that, Ghost Recon: Wildlands, and maybe one or two others installed on
the Ubisoft launcher (that I haven't opened in at least a year).
SOA, Breaking Bad, Weeds. Top of my head 3 more that got worse
as it goes along. Honestly seasons 1-2 for all the above, anything else just got stupid IMO. So I quit.
Oh we not only will walk out of a movie, but we try to get a refund too. If my Daughter is there she'll bitch at the manager so much they start throwing us cash.
Dexter was one my ex loved and so I watched it begrudgingly because Ti> E> we
had a tiny place and there was nowhere else to go. I hated the hell out of that stupid show lol.
LOL, my Son loved it so we decided to give it a try. Same as above
season 1 I liked, season 2 not so much.... haven't continued season 2.
Dude I never watched DS9. I remember as a kid thinking it looked darker than TNG. I should give it a whirl, I like the concept of a space
station.
Have you watched any of the other series? I watched the recent one "Picard" - I think it had two seasons? It was ok, good not great.
I remember the last episode of the mainline TWD thinking
*spoilers*
WTF happened to Rick? I watched this whole goddamn show and don't know where Rick is. What. The. Fuck.
I was reading an article (can't remember when or where) that basically said that HBO was concerned that GOT wasn't getting any rewatches.
That's how bad they fucked it up, it was one of the most insane things ever on TV and people were nuts about it and now they won't even rewatch it out of boredom lol.
I was thinking of going to see the new Beetlejuice though, to get out of the house for a bit.
The flashback TV talk show scene in The Last of Us scared the crap out
I like RDR2 a lot, but yeah, it is definitely slow. A lot of slow
travel, a lot of animation priority (on pretty much anything you do.)
It's not a game for the impatient.
Dude I never watched DS9. I remember as a kid thinking it looked darker than TNG. I should give it a whirl, I like the concept of a space
station.
Have you watched any of the other series? I watched the recent one "Picard" - I think it had two seasons? It was ok, good not great.
Well that's fucking racist of you. Be better, man!
(Ha!)
Well that's fucking racist of you. Be better, man!
(Ha!)
DS9 is a weird show. On one hand, it has some great characters, some epic moments (there's a literal war in it that spans many, many episodes) and probably some of the best writing in all of Star Trek. Sisko is a very different type of captain, and rewatching it now, I'm kind of digging how little bullshit he takes from anyone.
On the other hand, a lot of the characters are far less likable at first than, say TNG's crew. Also, taking place on a space station meant that
I have. I watched the first three, I think, seasons of Discovery which
was a very mixed bag. It tried to take some risks and make some big
Wait... you skipped to it, right? Rick's "disappearance" (we were
actually shown what happened to him) was pretty pivotal to the last few seasons. :P It was okay, but just like Michael Scott leaving The Office, something was lost in the equation even when it worked.
I kind of liked "Fear the Walking Dead" a lot... for a while. It started rough, got better, got a lot better, than got way worse, then started to get better, and I kind of *hated* its last season. What a rocky ride.
Go see Alien: Romulus first! I'll see the new Beetlejuice in a week or two, but I don't have high expectations. :)
The funny thing about that is, the reason cordyceps can't live in people is because we're too hot for it to survive. So cordyceps mutated enough to survive in 98.6F temperature. Maybe the cure is to forcibly or artifically elevate the body temp for long enough for the fungus to die?
ds9 is definitely worth the view. it's number two to tng in my book.
agreed on picard. i didn't even make it through the second season.
he's just too old. they should have made that 20 years ago.
Give everyone a non-lethal flu that causes a fever and you kill the fungus. Then, you get to deal with a bio-engineered virus that mutates
and causes the next franchise.
Aside: I read an interesting novel years ago called "The Plague Year", about a nanotech designed to kill cancer that runs amok. The only saving grace is that it dies above 10,000 foot altitude, so what's left of humanity is huddled around mountain tops, ski hills, and so on. I didn't realize it was part of a trilogy and just bought them all on Kindle.
Breaking Bad? Honestly, this is the first time I've heard someone say
that one got weaker.
would have to be INCREDIBLY, EGREGIOUSLY, OFFENSIVELY terrible for me
to try to get a refund. :P
i know you're cracking jokes, but relevant to this thread, i went to some convention years ago and they had the main guy (avery brooks) and the
guy who played his son (cirroc lofton) there for a panel.
it was super weird because cirroc was like "this guy was like a dad to
me" at the start of it and avery brooks was talking about how he felt super disrespected and how a bunch of business decisions treated him extremely poorly. he blamed it on racial stuff and there was like this weird "that wasn't my experience at all, are you okay?" kind of thing
from lofton. extra yikes kind of moment to be sitting in an audience
for.
that whole thing stuck with me way more than anything else 'cause i honestly can't even remember a single other thing they said or anything else at that convention. hehe.
I never watched Discovery. I'd debated checking it out and don't
remember why I ended up skipping it. Maybe it's that whole concept of having to get into a new series of a show that you know is going to drag on for a while and take some commitment to finish.
Geez I'm talking about watching a tv show here, not building a railroad.
Oh, dude, I know /why/ he disappeared, but they kept the search for Rick at the semi forefront and teased it out that there would be some revelation. It didn't deliver on that at all which is what I thought was lame. They kept the door open intentionally with no real plan on what
they were going to do.
I'm like a grumpy old bastard or something but I really can't stand side quests! lol. I don't know why, I find them annoying. I have a short attention span though.
Right. And riding on horses is cool and all but it's too slow! Takes forever to get anywhere! hehe
Those games are frustrating for me because sometimes I am just trying to run somewhere and I get too close to a wall or something and the idiot starts doing parkour in the middle of a busy street. Like wtf dude.
Dude! I recently tried playing Goldeneye on my N64 and remember as a kid thinking how insane the graphics were. This thing looks like a shitty cartoon lol.
I like RDR2 a lot, but yeah, it is definitely slow. A lot of slow
travel, a lot of animation priority (on pretty much anything you do.)
It's not a game for the impatient.
San Andreas is literally the only mainline GTA I've never played, even a little. I plan on going back and playing it sometime soon (tm).
I've actually been thinking of picking up The Division 1 and 2 one of these days, just to play through their campaigns. I know they're
semi-dead now, but I think I'd enjoy them. Ghost Recon: Wildlands is one that impressed me a lot more than I expected it to. It's a great game to leave installed just for a quick fuckabout when you're bored.
For a while there, I played almost every Tom Clancy game... which, at
that time, was a hell of a lot of them. I still like the more tactical "realistic" titles the most, like the first Ghost Recon and the early Rainbow Six games. I dig Splinter Cell a lot too, though never played
the more recent iterations. That's one that is over due for a comeback.
I made it a ways into it, but real life probably got in the way. Like
most games, you almost have to set aside a good 2+ hours (sometimes WAY more) in order to feel like you accomplished anything in the game.
Same shit, different storyline. You probably wouldn't miss much. :)
Yeah, Clancy games used to come out about as often as Call of Duty games do now. I've passed up so many of both of those, sometimes even because the one I was still playing was better! :)
Maybe I just got bored? I'm trying to re-watch it becuase everyone tells me how much I should enjoy it. So we started season 1 again the other week. Of course I lost interest again and stopped watching. :(
It might be worth your time - I don't think it's total trash or anything. Honestly, it's one of those increasingly common situations where, if you're not a total Star Trek nerd, you may not be *even a little*
bothered by most of the things about the show that had people on Reddit foaming at the mouth in rage.
While I roll my eyes about people hating on shit for silly reasons, and especially the weird bandwagon culture around that, I couldn't get into Enterprise because of how I perceived its changes to my beloved
franchise, so I do *get it*. I just think people take this shit far too seriously sometimes.
Ha! While that's true, I feel that weight with every goddamn new thing I do too - maybe its an ADHD thing. ;)
Oh, they had a plan from the beginning, but it wasn't clearly
communicated to fans. Originally, after giving Andrew Lincoln his break for a while, the planned to have not one, but three movies (I assume streaming movies?) about Rick's adventures post capture.
Definitely! Especially when they don't have anything to do with the
story, don't give you anything you need to actually finish the game (except extra money you don't need, maybe). They're really just a giant distraction from finishing the game in record time, so they can boast about "w00t! 22 hours of game play!" When the story really only takes
like 12 hours. :)
Yeah, or bump the wrong person and you end up in a 10 minute fight with
30 of his friends.. when all you were trying to do is get to the other side of the map.
I mean, Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and N64 - games I think I could go
back to without high hopes of incredible graphics, or even with the expectation of a more cartoonish atmosphere. But I see what you mean, I was crazy about Metal Gear Solid on PS1 way back when. If I were to play that version again, I'd probably wonder why the hell I was so into it
back then. :)
Gotcha. Ugh, I don't wanna be strung along even farther after watching eleven seasons and not even knowing the origin of the thing or where the main dude is. But I digress. I'm curmudgeonly about this shit.
Precisely.
I can dig DLC and addons and stuff but side quests during the main narrative get on my nerves.
I will say the one Assassin's Creed game with the pirate ship theme was pretty cool. I liked the visuals.
Nowadays it makes me think of Hawk :(
sound. Sucks to see some of your heroes facing down those changes. Mortality is lame.
Re: the origin of the virus, I actually didn't give that much of a shit about where it came from, to be honest. I didn't really feel like that
was what the show was about, and the little bit of intrigue from the end of S1 was loooonnnnnng dried up by the time they got back around to it.
This is a big issue I'm having right now with Fallout 4. I'm pretty sure I've put over 100 hours into it and I'm not all that close to finishing the main quest, yet, I also don't feel like I've scratched the surface
on the side content. I swear you could easily spend hundreds of hours
JUST exploring the world and ignoring any quests that you don't accidentally get involved with. I'd been playing it so long (and
enjoying it, mind you) that I finally had to focus in on finishing the main story so I can move the hell on already. :P
You mean Assassin's Creed Rogue, right? :P
speaking of mortality, james earl jones just passed. sad times for
sci-fi fans, but i guess he agreed to let lucasfilm keep using his voice so i'm sure they'll be milking it for years to come.
I think some of the interim seasons slog a bit. But there's a lot of world/character/story building and it pays off. I also didn't get into
it the first time and dropped off after a bit, but then am glad I
restarted it.
jack phlash wrote to esc <=-
Re: the origin of the virus, I actually didn't give that much of a shit about where it came from, to be honest. I didn't really feel like that
was what the show was about, and the little bit of intrigue from the
end of S1 was loooonnnnnng dried up by the time they got back around to it.
jinkusu wrote to esc <=-
sound. Sucks to see some of your heroes facing down those changes. Mortality is lame.
speaking of mortality, james earl jones just passed. sad times for
sci-fi fans, but i guess he agreed to let lucasfilm keep using his
voice so i'm sure they'll be milking it for years to come.
jinkusu wrote to esc <=-
speaking of mortality, james earl jones just passed. sad times for
sci-fi fans, but i guess he agreed to let lucasfilm keep using his
voice so i'm sure they'll be milking it for years to come.
Idk man. I can't get into things that I think drag on and run out of ideas. That's my personal take on TWD, and I don't mean that as an insult or anything, but I get really frustrated for some reason.
You shouldn't feel bad - I said that knowing I'm like, the ONLY person I know who still watches TWD. I'm sure most of my friends thing I'm an
the first end? :P It's an incredible game, but less "fun" than, say, GTA
V to go back to Esc's comparison, and all of the extra complexity of the control scheme combined with the slow, weird animations sometimes makes
me want to throw my controller through my TV.
Probably not, but it is a lot of people's favorite one and I loved GTA
1, GTA 3, VC, and IV and V, so... seems like I should probably play it
one of these days. *shrug* I think one of the main reasons I never
played it was the theme. I don't give too much of a shit about "hood" culture shit, although divorced from back when it was more current/popular, I think I'd enjoy it now.
Ha! Yep, those days are gone for Clancy games though, for better or for worse. I felt that exact what about GR: Wildlands vs GR: Breakpoint. Wildlands looked and sounded (feature wise) so much better to me.
I can dig DLC and addons and stuff but side quests during the main narrative get on my nerves.
I will say the one Assassin's Creed game with the pirate ship theme was pretty cool. I liked the visuals.
It's weird...I do love older games and have all the consoles and enjoy playing on original hardware. But objectively the new stuff is much
better. I guess nostalgia is a powerful drug.
Hell, never even knew there was a pirate themed one. How does that even work? Is there 1000 of them parked side by side that you can jump from mast to mast or something? Or is it just part of the game where there's still some big ass city you have to rummage through?
Playability and graphics wise, yes. Definitely. However, it seems as though, just like movies, they're running out of ideas and rehashing a bunch of old shit. ;(
If I'm to make another comparison to The Last of Us, I really appreciate how the origin of the thing was explained. And I'd go so far as to say
the zombies were even less a part of the main story in that than in TWD!
But yeah. I get it. I know that wasn't the intent with TWD, it's just...something as a watcher that I appreciate, I guess.
Like, I'm of the opinion it could really be one of two things. One, it
was intentionally omitted because there was a desire to not make the
story about that, and to focus on what happens next. Or, it could be
that nobody could come up with any decent back story so the whole
"that's not the point!" thing is an excuse. In any case, both are less than satisfying to me. :P
But like I said I'm a curmudgeon.
Dude! I tried getting into Skyrim but found it took SO long to push the actual narrative forward. It was like, all side quests as far as I could tell. Go into some cave, beat up everything in it, and find some mysterious way out at the very end so you don't have to go back through the whole cave lol.
I eventually enabled cheats so that I could use the one shout where you dash forward over and over again. This enabled me to traverse the landscape much faster and try to ignore all the shit that didn't matter.
It /still/ took forever and I /still/ have no idea where in the main
story I am, so I gave up.
I tried doing this several times, btw. This was not a one-off attempt!
I did appreciate the flashbacks in The Last of Us showing the first
days, the source of the infection and the speed at which it took over
the world - and the government trying to hold on.
I'm with esc on this. But I'm different because I used to love TWD. I was addicted to it and I got excited each time a new episode came out. But
by the time the last season began, I completely lost interest in it. I fell asleep trying to watch the last few episodes. I didn't even know
what the fuck was going on anymore. I think it could have been ended in
a more exciting way.
To be honest, I don't think I ever finished it. Hell, I don't even remember what I owned it on, but I would guess PS4, which has been given to my son and then to my daughter when he got sick of it. lol
Sounds like some early stage plans for a Division 3 somewhere around
2026 is the latest I've heard, so I need to find a few interesting
things to keep me busy for a while.
I mean, there's a fine line between those two things. We'll probably
never know which one applies here unless Robert Kirkman has ever said explicitly. To my (limited) knowledge, he hasn't.
Again, it's really all about telling a good story while managing the
focus and scope of the narrative. That's a major element of good storytelling IMO. A good story may make you curious about some of these things, sure, but it should work fine without needing to explain them in any sort of depth (unless being some super detail oriented thing is one
of the goals, of course.) If it ends up morphing from curiosity to
feeling like a big piece of the story is missing without those details, then the writer/storyteller has probably failed somewhere.
That's probably also why they decided to go a different route with TLoU
- to try to make the infected feel a bit more interesting and a bit more realistic than just following the same old, tired zombie tropes to the letter... and if you're going to deviate from them in some significant
way (or just in a way you think is cool) you might as well explain it.
Ha! I believe that. Those games don't do an amazing job of making the "critical path" extremely obvious, because frankly, that's not what they're about. They WANT you to explore, get lost even, discover and get sidetracked by random side quests, etc. and kind of do whatever you
want. While similar, RDR2 isn't quite like that - sure, there's a lot of distractions, long travel times, etc. but the main story is never too obfuscated by that stuff. It's there if you want to pursue it. I think RDR2 is less about wanting you to explore, and more about wanting to
make you feel immersed.
Unfortunately, I don't think many of these games (including the Rock
Star open world games) work all that well when you decide to concentrate on the main stories and completely ignore everything else, because regardless of the story itself, playing the missions back to back to
back isn't usually a great experience IMO, as that kind of highlights
the repetitive, mechanical nature of their quest/mission designs.
Man, in my last post I basically told you that you were watching TWD wrong, and now I'm telling you you're playing Skyrim wrong. What an asshole I am. :P
On the one hand, I agree with you. On the other, I think most successful sci-fi franchises have been those that try to explain the lore. Star
Trek with Warp Drive, Star Wars with miticlorions and the Force,
literally any other zombie franchise. I get it from the perspective of saying "ok well the origin of this thing wouldn't materially impact the outcome, so let's avoid it as an unnecessary distraction" thing, but...that doesn't mean I have to like it. :P
Perfectly stated! I like that last sentence. I didn't realize /why/ I loved GTA V so much vs all these other games out there, and that summarizes it for me.
Totally. All that said, games like Skyrim are full of enemies
everywhere. One nice thing about GTA V is that you can basically be a tourist. The visuals are great, and just driving around exploring is pretty relaxing. This makes an organic way to stumble onto side quests. Skyrim to me felt like I was trying to go to some place for some reason and all of a sudden some dudes are shooting arrows at me for no reason and, bam, I'm in a side quest. *shrug*
Haha. Are we being elitists? Are we gatekeeping?
what the fuck was going on anymore. I think it could have been ended a more exciting way.
Nah, I don't disagree with that. I also agree that the end of the series was fairly weak. Sure, it resolve some things, it tied some things up, I guess, but it wasn't all that exciting.
The flip side to this is that sometimes explaining things actually makes them worse - sometimes not knowing and relying your own interpretation, imagination, headcanon, whatever you want to call it, is far better than the terrible shit TV writers are likely to come up with. ;)
Hell, you just mentioned one of the all time best examples of this -
it's such a good example that I needed to re-read your post a few times
to make sure you weren't making a joke that went over my head - midi-fucking-chlorians. :P Quite a lot of Star Wars fans *ABSOLUTELY
HATE* the fact that midichlorians exist in canon. Before Episode 1, the force the mysterious and mystical. We never needed to be told how the force ACTUALLY works because it's way less compelling than it being mysterious and ultimately left up to interpretation, and, again, it
REALLY doesn't matter AT ALL for the purposes of the story. Knowing that it's apparently the result of these micro-organisms cheapens the entire thing, never mind the fact that it was done so long after the original trilogy, also crushes a lot of people's personal headcanons.
One interesting aspect of this (well, to me) is how different those
games feel to play, when on-paper, their game actually sounds very, very similar.
Yeah, that makes sense, though in these games' defense, I think a lot
more people enjoy finding themselves in a side quest and/or in a fight while exploring (you might call it "adventuring" even) than just walking around like a tourist. Many people would call the latter boring.
esc wrote to jack phlash <=-
Hmmmm...Jurassic Park! That would've been silly if the story was just
"he cloned dinosaurs!" - they had to make it "this is how he cloned dinosaurs!"
That reminds me of Tom Clancy. I read "The Hunt for Red October" after
seeing the movie, and the book gets so mired in technical detail that
it slogs through the story compared to the movie.
What about the spin-offs? Are they any better? I started watching Fear
The Walking Dead, and I thought it was pretty cool. Did it ass out like TWD? Maybe I should get back on the train?
Without that aspect of it, the suspension of disbelief for me wouldn't happen. It wouldn't be there at all. I'd find it absurd. Or The Matrix. This is probably another poor example because I think that franchise
went totally off the rails after the first film, but they still had to give enough backstory to make everything believable (to a degree, obviously).
Anywho, enough! I think we've both stated our cases.
Yeah totally. I think The Last of Us on paper probably feels like some zombie game (talking about the game here, not the show). It probably
isn't terribly distinguishable from Resident Evil at first glance. But it's an entirely different story, feel, ... everything. It's crazy.
Sometimes I just want the main story! What was that game I played a few years ago that was really just a visual novel. You were like a
firefighter in the mountains or something.
OH! Firewatch. That game is incredible. No side quests from what I can remember, just push the main narrative forward. I loved it.
I shouldn't really call that one a game, though. It really is more of a visual novel. Perhaps those are the types of things I prefer...hmmm...
That reminds me of Tom Clancy. I read "The Hunt for Red October" after
seeing the movie, and the book gets so mired in technical detail that
it slogs through the story compared to the movie.
IIRC you like, have a pirate ship and then you get in sea battles and go doing pirate shit on various islands. Pretty cool visuals in that game, though.
Or how when I play some NBA game on Genesis, I can actually score some baskets and do other cool stuff even if I lose games, but I can do it
right off the bat. New NBA games to me feel like you have to be so
precise with so many factors to even make a shot, it's not fun for me.
Plus they take advantage of people with that whole pay to play lootcrate thing.
Also, there's one almost no one has heard of called "Tales of the Walking Dead" which is kind of an anthology where each episode is just a random story set in the same world as the other shows. There are SOME
references to other shows/characters, but in general these stories are almost entirely unrelated one-offs. I thought it was okay, but - and I know its a thin line - it mostly feels like generic zombie stuff rather than The Walking Dead IMO.
There ya go!
P.S. I did love in Rogue One that they were able to make new voice
tracks for Red leader and Gold leader from unused footage and Star Wars:
A New Hope.
I will say the one Assassin's Creed game with the pirate ship theme wa pretty cool. I liked the visuals.Hell, never even knew there was a pirate themed one. How does that even
Nah, I don't disagree with that. I also agree that the end of the series was fairly weak. Sure, it resolve some things, it tied some things up, I guess, but it wasn't all that exciting.
OH! Firewatch. That game is incredible. No side quests from what I can remember, just push the main narrative forward. I loved it.
* Dead City follows Negan and Maggie as they visit Manhattan and get
Hehe. Nah. While I do TOTALLY disagree with you on this, I *kinda* get where you're coming from and I think we've both stated our cases clearly enough that no one is going to convince the other if we continue to talk about it, so onto the next topic... ;)
But yeah, for me, the little bit of it I've seen played, the biggest
thing about TLoU is its presentation and tone. If *feels* very different than any other zombie video game I can think of. I can think of some
books and movies that are a little closer, but not so much games.
I think there was just enough game there for it to be considered a game. Definitely more than a visual novel, though I get the comparison. In
case you didn't know, they jokingly call those types of games "walking simulators" which is pretty hilarious and somewhat accurate.
I personally LOVED Firewatch - it faarrrrr surpassed my expectations.
They did a masterful job at making you feel like there was a lot more going on then really was, while at the end of the game it was really
just about your character and his relationship with Delilah, and not
much else. A lot of people got pissy about that, especially the game's ending, but I thought it all worked quite well.
I need to replay that thing one of these days. I wish Campo Santo made another game, but unfortunately they got swallowed by up Valve and the game they were working on "The Valley of the Gods" (which I suspect
might have been similar) never saw the light of day.
So there's multiple islands?
This might be something I could get into, as long as it's not the same
old repetitive giant city that makes up the entire game. :)
True. Controls today are way more difficult. Hell, I was watching my kid play the latest Mortal Kombat and I asked him to do some moves, there's some like 10+ button combos now (thanks Tekken <smh>)!
that movie got panned pretty hard, but honestly i thought it was great. there were a few weird moments that were unnecessary like the fake grand moff tarkin/peter cushing, but in the grand scheme of star wars war crimes, that was a light one IMO.
check it out, you can probably find it cheap as hell by now. ac4: black flag. it actually spawned a bunch of other games trying to cash in on
the idea because it was pretty beloved. (was also the last AC game i played -- i think they kind of jumped the shark after that one.)
I enjoyed that one too. Also really liked that Edith Finch game.
Cool! I had no idea there were so many. I'm gonna start looking for them on Netflix (we'll see how that goes!)
I should probably (first) re-watch the last 2 seasons of the original
TWD so I can figure out what that was all about. After the death of
Rick, stuff stopped making sense.
that movie got panned pretty hard, but honestly i thought it was great. there were a few weird moments that were unnecessary like the fake grand moff tarkin/peter cushing, but in the grand scheme of star wars war crimes, that was a light one IMO.
yeah, i was a little sad they basically jumped to the end of game 1 so quick. they could have milked multiple seasons out of it and really
expand on things, but.. <shrug>
I liked the Maggie character and was lowkey crushing on the actress for
a bit, but I don't think she was cast properly. Lemme 'splain.
Rick felt like a leader. That character was cast well.
Maggie felt like an appropriately cast actress initially but I never really understood her transition into being the big bad boss bitch. It just didn't really work for me. She didn't seem to have that 'x' factor you expect out of a strong leader. Does that make sense?
In spite of all his evildoings, Negan was a strong leader. He was a
strong antagonist leader. He had that swagger and command of a scene. It worked. But yeah for some reason the Maggie actress didn't do it for me other than being the sweet/cutesie southern girl. That sounds sexist as hell but isn't intended to be so, I just don't know how else to characterize what her initial character was.
Totally dude. 'preciate it. However just wanted to mention you're objectively wrong, everyone agrees. Sorry.
hehe ;)
For me, a lot of those smaller details make up quite a lot of the enjoyment of the game. I think that's why I love GTA V so much...there
are a lot of those smaller details that really build an incredible experience.
Ha! See, I don't actually take that as a pejorative, and will actively seek these out now that I know what the genre is called :P
Yeah, it's really really cool. And in terms of it being somewhat of an RPG, you actually do get into character a bit because the depth of character development is contingent upon some decisions you make, moreso than in traditional RGP type games like Baldur's Gate or something. In
BG and similar games, it's like, you make certain decisions which unlock certain aspects of the game, which is cool, and offers some
replayability. But Firewatch feels much more genuine...like, acting evil doesn't give you access to evil spells or something, or allow you to
pick NPC pockets, etc., but the way you interact with Delilah will have material impacts into how the relationship evolves.
Oh shit I had no idea. That sucks. I love indie studios that produce amazing games. I really can't stand when they get bought, but hey,
that's the reward these people deserve for making a killer game like
that. So I get it. But yeah, that game is a snapshot in time of
something truly unique and an amazing experience.
Which one came after? I recall trying to play one that I think was in Egypt, maybe. Also one in ancient Rome. I can't remember to be honest.
But I think the Egypt one was a bit bizarre...wish I could remember what about it turned me off but I do recall being nonplussed with it
following the Black Flag entry.
I enjoyed that one too. Also really liked that Edith Finch game.Hadn't heard of this, googling now for some gameplay shots.
Along the same lines, some game play but it's all pretty much directed. All in all I thought good graphics (for the time) and a decent story.
Yeah, seems pretty neat. I was watching some YouTube vids and decided
it looked cool enough to try without watching it all and seeing
spoilers. Thanks for the rec.
Is this the one about them stealing the death star plans? If so, it was actually my favorite film/media/etc in the entire franchise. I really thought it was a great story and I liked how it was a self contained vignette.
Egypt, maybe. Also one in ancient Rome. I can't remember to be honest.
But I think the Egypt one was a bit bizarre...wish I could remember what about it turned me off but I do recall being nonplussed with it
following the Black Flag entry.
Heh. We were actually talking about "The Walking Dead" TV show, but some of my friends who are REALLY into the TLoU games felt similarly about S1 of the show - perhaps a little too rushed.
p.s. i also liked the han solo movie.
i need to go back and play the walking dead story games, actually. i
gave the first one a run and thought it was brilliant.
i'll be honest, i can't remember. they seemed to basically be just reskins of each other. i think they did an egypt and maybe a greek one?
i need to go back and play the walking dead story games, actually. i
gave the first one a run and thought it was brilliant.
I liked it too. I didn't *love* it - I kind of hated how they felt the need to try to cram every little reference to later movies into the backstory they could, for one. But yeah, kind of underrated IMO.
honestly this specific point is why i've been enjoying the tv shows more than the "recent" (heh) movies. they keep trying to ride the nostalgia train with the movies. constant references and the need to include the half-dead (or actually dead!) actors.
To many super hero movies. :) I think over the course of the last 10
plus year, I've watched only a few. Not my cup of tea. :>
To many super hero movies. :) I think over the course of the last 10
plus year, I've watched only a few. Not my cup of tea. :>
I thought I was the only one who didn't like them. The only ones I
enjoy are the deadpool ones. Teh rest of the super hero's are not
that exciting for me. My wife and son love the super hero movies so
they can watch them together and I'll go in the other room and read
a book. :)
Same. The majority of them just feel like CGI-fests to me.
I'll make an exception for Joker, and now for The Penguin on HBO.
Are they any good??
I haven't seen The Penguin yet aside from a couple of clips but it looks excellent. It's dark and lacks any supermagicalfantasypowers crap as far as I can tell.
Joker was excellent. It is, of course, farfetched, but it's done in a
way that suspends disbelief. It's a great film IMO.
Dead pool was on the list of some I watched. Only because of the adult humor, it drew me in.
esc wrote to niter3 <=-
Same. The majority of them just feel like CGI-fests to me.
niter3 wrote to Tiny <=-
Definitely not the only one. The only super hero movies I care about
are the original Batman movies with Michael Keaton, and some of the original supermans. That's about it.
As somebody else just mentioned, it's all the CGI crap that turns me off. That's the big one.
[1] and, how long before an actor bows out of a production and the
studio finishes his/her/their role in CGI. That'll be an interesting lawsuit.
Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson and Tim Burton were given a task and a
bar set by Christopher Reeve as Superman, and hit it out of the park -
without CGI, if memory serves. Kudos to Danny Elfman for the
soundtrack, as well.
As somebody else just mentioned, it's all the CGI crap that turns me That's the big one.
If you like to bitch about CGI, you and I will get along just fine hehe. Shit drives me /nuts/. It looks so cheap and cheezy. I can't stand it.
esc wrote to niter3 <=-
If you like to bitch about CGI, you and I will get along just fine
hehe. Shit drives me /nuts/. It looks so cheap and cheezy. I can't
stand it.
esc wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-
I hope they put Crispin Glover's likeness into a film without his
consent.
I'm told there is very little CGI in the new Beetle Juice. I'm
interested in seeing this movie. :) Plus I loved the original.
The first one I caught was "The Goonies". The organizer waxed poetic
I'm told there is very little CGI in the new Beetle Juice. I'm
interested in seeing this movie. :) Plus I loved the original.
I'm told there is very little CGI in the new Beetle Juice. I'm interested in seeing this movie. :) Plus I loved the original.
My wife liked it. I did not like one thing about it. I actually walked out and read a book. My son watched it through but said it wasn't
his favorite.
Interesting... I guess I will ask once I see it.
I think it should have stayed with the one movie and remained
a cult classic. I will still watch the original!
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