Josh Ritter’s Kathleen performance from Live at the Iveagh Gardens has far and away subsumed the studio version for me. The original track is fine, I guess, but there’s some kind of alchemy in that live performance that takes it from a kinda sleepy singer/songwriter ballad to a roots rock revival jam. Or something like that. Idk, I’m certainly no music critic, but I know which version I prefer.
Suggesting Symphony of the Night is well-known because of a goofy menu screen is almost comically missing the forest for the trees.
Perhaps, but I think that misses the point of Gunn harkening back to Silver Age comics with this movie. Puzzling out the “logic” of who knows what and why is sort of antithetical to the exercise being conducted. It’s like the folks who get wrapped around the axle about the conclusion of Superman 1978 not making a lick of sense to someone with an elementary understanding of physics. Oh, Superman can turn back time by flying around the Earth backwards? That’s absurd!! Yes, it is, now shut up and pass me the popcorn.
If it is necessary for the story, Superman’s identity will become relevant. Otherwise, everything operates on a shrug and a hand wave, and I’m sort of fine with that. Secret identity management is a fun aspect of a character like Spiderman, for example, because his whole thing is the burden of being a gifted individual. Great power = great responsibility and all. Therefore, making Peter Parker suffer because of Spiderman is kind of baked into the text of the character.
Meanwhile, I think Gunn’s approach to Superman/Clark is that neither is burdened by the other. I’m not even really sure he views it as a duality in that way. The text of the film seems to indicate that, in Gunn’s view, Clark and Superman are indistinguishable from one another, or even that Clark (the human) takes primacy over Kal-El/Superman. This intentionally contrasts with the Snyderverse interpretation of DC heroes, which was much more interested in how INhuman the DC canon of heroes were, Superman most of all.
There’s the kernel of a pretty good 3 minute YouTube skit in here.
ItellyouhwatmandangolgraveyardsmakingmoredoggoneracketthendangolMegalomartsportinggoodssectionnowadaysmanitellyouhwat. Dangolliberalnecromancersmakingthedeadwokemmhm.
I mean, I guess I just don’t view entertainment options as a finite resource. Amusements abound. Games, movies, shows, books, lectures, theater, articles, podcasts, music, sports, etc. The means to dispense with my free time far far far exceed the amount of free time I have to fritter away. So, while you may view backlog management as unhealthy min/maxing, I would counter that your preoccupation with “running out” of entertainment is, at least, equally as unhealthy a min/max mindset.
Also, I can’t speak for others, but your clothing analogy made me think of this: when I talk about not wanting to purchase a game because of my backlog, usually I don’t mean “aw man, I’d really like to get Baldur’s Gate 3, but I haven’t finished my Madden dynasty yet”. Rather, it would be closer to, “I’d really like to get Baldur’s Gate 3, but I bought both of the Owlcat Pathfinder RPGs last sale and I haven’t even booted those up yet”. So, it’s less about deciding whether or not to buy a shirt based on how many pairs of jeans you own, and more about deciding whether you need the latest, most fashionable cut of Levis when you’ve got 3 pairs of Costco jeans at home still.
Ultimately, it’s neither right nor wrong of you to hoard digital games. It’s your money, you do with it what you will. It just seems like a wildly hot take to come into that conversation swinging around accusatory statements like “that’s an unhealthy min-max mindset”.
That’s not really what’s implied in that statement. A better comparison, using your streaming service analogy, would be that you subscribed to Apple TV because you heard Severance was really good. However, one thing led to another, and now it’s months later, and you still haven’t watched Severance. So, instead of starting a new series (say, Ted Lasso) you queue up Severance instead.
It’s still not a great analogy, because the streaming service implies a real, ongoing cost to maintaining access to the service, which is not the case with most people’s game libraries. That being said, with Gamepass and GeForce Now etc, it’s not necessarily out of the question.
The purpose isn’t to “deplete entertainment options”, it’s to utilize the options you already have financial investment in before sinking more money into more options simply for their novelty.
The “point of the product” isn’t to provide theoretical novel entertainment value by sitting, unplayed, on my digital shelves. Bold take here, but I’d suggest the point of a video game is to be played.
I love this running gag.
You’re the one suggesting that your lack of attraction to these character models is an objective flaw. Which is, of course, semantically silly, if nothing else. Not finding a character (or person) attractive for whatever reason is your business. Taking to the forum and yelling about androgyny being objectively unattractive (in an online space which I’d wager has a disproportionate representation of trans and NB individuals) is an interesting choice.
That’s an incredibly evocative simile that ultimately still has me unsure of whether it’s good or bad.
Oh, give it a rest.
3/10, do not recommend
Review complete, the next 19 minutes will be spent processing existential dread.
This album rips.
Idk, I suppose you can argue that the binary morality system of the first BioShock was integral to the franchise identity, considering the time it came out and all, but I don’t hate that Infinite has one definitive ending to the story it wanted to tell. In fact, given the game’s emphasis on tropes and meta commentary, I’d imagine that setting a story in a universe with infinite possibilities and then removing the “choice” from the player to influence the ending was done deliberately. However, it’s been a decade since I played it, so I could certainly be misremembering some details.
I’m a homm2 guy myself ( shout out fheroes2 engine ), but I can’t sympathize with you on that front. Much like some folks’ relationship with Civ, I’m constantly in a “one more turn” loop when I play, to the point that I won’t boot it up if it’s after a certain time haha
Aw shit, here we go again…
They have made one Warhammer game, Rogue Trader. It is a party based, turn based, RPG based upon a tabletop ruleset. It’s quite good, though I admit that I play it on story mode difficulty cause I can’t be bothered to learn another RPG system right now, and idgaf about build crafting. With that being said, it’s a positively ENORMOUS game, with extraordinary amounts of optional content to interact with. If you go on expecting Space Marine 2, or Dawn of War, you’re likely going to be very upset. However, if you are prepared for something which apes the old Infinity Engine games of the 90s, or games inspired by the same, such as Pillars of Eternity, you’ll likely enjoy yourself.
Whether or not I factor in tax is entirely dependent on the size of the purchase I’m making. For the vast majority of purchases I make on a daily basis, I don’t think about it at all. 7% of $2.99 is negligible to me. However, if I’m making a large purchase, or if it’s a purchase which I know is subject to additional taxes beyond the sales tax, then I might consider it. 7% of $2.99 may be negligible, but 7% of $29,999 is a significant amount all by its lonesome.
For most people, I’d imagine this is most common when it comes to purchasing vehicles, as those tend to carry large prices and special taxes which results in a significant increase in price. For example, I purchased a new vehicle a couple years ago for MSRP, but wound up paying several thousand dollars more than that due to various taxes and the registration fees. I didn’t know exactly how much those surcharges would be (though I easily could have calculated them by visiting my state’s Department of Motor Vehicles website and plugging a figure or two into their calculator) but I had a ball park idea which I could budget around. Also, I’m pretty sure the dealership I bought from provided an estimated total purchase price which included the fees for the locality it was located in. Unfortunately, most of that was irrelevant to me, as I had traveled from another state to purchase this vehicle, which illustrates the minor frustrations that an all-inclusive price tag would introduce in America.
Like, I don’t think you’re wrong for thinking it’s odd, and yes, there are ways to fix it, but it’s just such a non-issue (not to mention America’s “touchy” relationship with taxation meaning these attempts to “fix” things would rapidly become politicized) that no one cares to do anything about it. As someone else said, we intuitively learn what the rough tax rate will be for our common purchases and just factor that in.
For both rich atmosphere and unique game mechanics, you could do a lot worse than Return of the Obra Dinn.
If you’re unfamiliar, the presentation evokes early PC (or Mac, more specifically) black and white “1 bit” games, but real time 3d. This already is very distinctive, but the gameplay also sets it apart.
You are an insurance investigator with a magic pocket watch which allows you to travel back to the moment in time that someone expired, if you find their corpse. From these brief flashes (and by cross-referencing the ship manifest) you piece together what happened to all the crew and passengers on the ships ill-fated voyage, before it’s baffling reemergence years after the fact.