BigJKO

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by BigJKO

  1. Posted

    Yes! I got one too. Mario Kart World is pretty amazing. Plays real nice, the Free Roam is really chill and Knockout Tour is fantastic especially online. Looks gorgeous. Music is fabulous. Soundtrack of the year.

     

    I've also started playing Tears of the Kingdom again. The new updates are pretty substantial. Feels so good to play it in 60fps. And I forgot how much fun this game is.

     

    And I'm looking forward to Bananza. That direct really sold me on it. Looks like Odyssey but with Donkey Kong.

  6. Posted

    Damn.. Captain America: Brave New World was really middling to bad. Very messy, sometimes good, never even close to great. Often just flat out boring.

     

    Spoiler

    Just.. I don’t know what secret sauce they’re missing from when they made Wonter Soldier. They have all the setup, but none of it builds up properly and just sort of fizzles out into nothing. Giancarlo feels like he’s airdropped into the movie from a different movie. Ford brings some gravitas but the movie isn’t directed well enough to capitalize on his gravitas, so it also falls flat. The closest thing to working is Lumbly’s Isaiah Bradley storyline. But even that feels chopped up. I also quite liked the main villain’s whole deal until that sort of unraveled by the end and the movie lost interest in him.. It was also a bummer when you realize the whole movie is just building towards the big fight that’s already been shown in the trailer.

     

    I would be very interested to know what the shape of the film was before they started redoing so much of it. 

  7. Posted

    On 09/02/2025 at 6:14 PM, Ben X said:

    The Preposterous Awesomeness of Everything - very funny! An early game by Joe Richardson who does those Terry Gilliam animation style adventure games, with a similar photomontage style. I really enjoyed the Orwellian allegory and the presentation was really striking and full of fun details. It's basically a Garden Of Eden type set-up where people quickly start wearing clothes and voting between two near-identical candidates for a PM (Project Manager) to build them a rocket to escape their planet. I will say, it is a bit of a shame that it's all a little clunky UI-wise and while the puzzles aren't really meant to be challenging (which works fine here) a couple of them are a bit shitty. You do have a hint character for most of the time, though, so I never got bogged down. It's also a shame that big blocks of text in pop-up windows are used for most of the satire and that there's no speech, as delivering more of the satire via dialogue would have helped, I think. But overall I laughed a lot, and it reminded me a lot of my Twine/Cwine game 'The Often-Ending Story' (which I originally wrote for the Idle Thumbs newspaper!) in that it's a satire where you have no idea where it's going to go next or when you're going to get a funny death (and then plonked back to a reasonable restart point).

     

    Sidenote: apparently this features a cameo by PewDiePie (I suppose comprising wholly of a mangled up photo as one character's face and maybe a couple of grunts). This was released in 2016, which I feel like was probably at a point when PDP's awfulness was broadly known and Richardson should have known better, but maybe I'm wrong on that. Plus apparently once he saw the game PDP stopped returning Richardson's emails, so that's pretty funny.


    oh nice, I’ve been following the development of his latest game not even knowing he’d made similar games before. His newest one is out now, by the way: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1739900/Death_of_the_Reprobate/

  8. Posted

    Rewatched Captain America: The Winter Soldier, preparing for the new Captain America and man.. that is a *very* tight film compared to MCU films later on. From the very first running scene with Steve and Sam, the first 50 minutes or so fly by so quickly, with the big boat setpiece, Fury's escape and the elevator fight. It's just really tight action film-making and Cap feels so chunky and powerful in this one. Absolute love it. Sort of slowly falls apart by the end, when it's a gigantic three helicarrier setpiece, but the first half is so good it carries you over the later half. Redford and Sam Jackson are great.

     

    After that I started Captain America: Civil War, which just immediately feels like such a downgrade. Lots of fun elements, but you can feel the bloat. Too many threads, too nebulous a threat from Zemo. The opening setpiece is no Lemurian Star. Has to do a lot of introductions and setting up before it can get anywhere. The big fight between them all at the airport is a lot of fun, but it's just there to be fun. I do like the central conflict between Tony and Steve and their final fight over Bucky is where the real stuff is, but the way there is just too sweaty.

     

    So.. I'm still excited to see the fourth one. I really like the trailers they've been putting out for it. Maybe Ford can bring some good Redford energy to this one.

     

    Speaking of trailers! The Fantastic Four: First Steps trailer looks awesome!

     

  10. Posted

    On 1/29/2025 at 12:19 AM, clyde said:

    I enjoy Familiar Things a lot. It is an easy paced read that was enjoyable and meaningful and intriguing for me. I think about it often.

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33148672-familiar-things

     

    Thanks clyde! It sounds really nice, I'll make sure to check it out. :tup:

     

    23 hours ago, Lechimp said:

    What do you like to read? I got back into reading a lot last year and novellas and audio books were what made that transition easier. I am currently reading a lot of Sci-fi and fantasy lately so I've been into the Murderbot series and novellas by Nghi Vo.

     

    Sci-fi and fantasy was my main jam when I did read (a lot of it was just Pratchett books, honestly) so Murderbot sounds right up my alley. Thanks! :tup:

  11. Posted

    Halo2's obviously gone missing, but now that this is just a general recommendation thread.. does anyone have any new recommendations?

     

    Or, actually: Does anyone have any good recommendations for someone (me) who doesn't read a lot? I dream of getting back to reading, but I might want to start with something a bit easier on the brain.

  15. Posted

    25 minutes ago, Henke said:

    Oh btw, in lieu of Idle Thumbs episodes about it, check out the Eggplant Podcast, which is on a year-long journey of playing through the collection one game per week. They're currently up to the 17th game, Campanella.

     

    Ah, perfect! Excellent recommendation, I'll check it out. Thanks! :tup:

     

    Look at us, using forums to recommend things again. 🥰

  16. Posted

    Good catch! I haven't seen any site mention that there's dual optical sensors. Maybe it's for determining the orientation of the mouse, e.g. for rotating a brush when painting in Mario Paint.

  18. Posted

    That's actually a very good idea, going in as blind as possible. I'm already spoiled on some surprises, but maybe I can stay away from any more previews and news 'til April. We'll see.

     

    As for Disney ruining it, I'm optimistic they won't. It's not a big enough hit for them to meddle with, I feel. But I could be wrong. It's a minor miracle already that we're even getting a Season 2, that Tony Gilroy seemingly has so much creative freedom and the budget for both seasons is reportedly at $645 million. Maybe Disney will fuck with it after all, with it seemingly the only good Star Wars thing they've got going for them*.

     

    *I like Skeleton Crew a lot, for very different reasons. It's not the best Star Wars, or anything, but it's oozing with personality.

  20. Posted

    Rewatched Fire Walk With Me and The Return at the end of last year and had an absolute blast re-listening to this whole podcast simultaneously. An incredible resource and also very funny to listen to the various theorizing and thoughts early on. Just wanted to mention that this is still one of the best Twin Peaks podcasts out there and well worth re-listening to. Great job, guys!

  24. Posted

    Aside from the above forum member who is definitely a real person, is anyone else still excited about Marvel movies?

     

    I'm starting to get a little excited about the next batch.

     

    Thunderbirds kind of looks like a real movie with nice cinematography, but we'll see. I think Pugh is really fun as Yelena. 

     

    Captain America: New World Order Brave New World trailer kind of slaps, editing-wise but the visuals are sort of all over the place. Will be interesting to see how chopped-up it'll feel considering the amount of time it's been in development and the re-writes and re-shoots. Apparently Giancarlo Esposito is a late addition? 

     

    I'm mega-excited about a 50s retro-futurist Fantastic Four: First Steps. And totally forgot that it's coming out this year?!

     

    As for future stuff: I think the Doctor Doom announcement was simultaneously super desperate and kind of brilliant.

  25. Posted

    On 31/07/2018 at 5:44 PM, Ben X said:

    However, I happen to know that @BigJKO just embarked on a franchise re-watch (only including 2 on my insistence!), so he may be able to give a more precise ranking at some point soon...

     

    My ranking changes often, as I am quite a big fan of the McQuarrie run of 5-7 so they are all fighting for the top spots. I totally get that it's not as different in style or auter-y as 1 and 2, but I feel like he's still been succesful in giving them all their distinct tone. Fallout being the more serious one, very action-driven. Dead Reckoning is a much more slap-stick, almost Looney Tunes/Buster Keaton romp. Rogue Nation is very heavy on the espionage and is moodier than the rest.

     

    At the moment I rank them 6 > 7 > 5 > 4 > 1 > 3 > 2

     

    But, aside from 2, these are all movies I love a lot so I could rank them in any order, honestly. I probably rank 7 higher than most, only because I really love when this franchise goes for the laughs. It's got so many good setpieces. The airport, the yellow Fiat. The entire train sequence is absolute killer. Loved every bit of it. It's definitely too long, but who can blame them when the setpieces are this good. I could watch this stuff forever. Am incredibly excited for The Final Reckoning this year. Have probably watched the trailer 20 times by now.