dium

I sincerely doubt any CG was made to look intentionally cheap; much more likely it looked cheap because (comparatively) it was. But it's all relative. I think there's an unfortunate but unavoidable arms race with computer graphics where audiences can't help but judge everything against whatever's the best thing they've seen, even if the comparison isn't 'fair'. Even a flagship TV show in 2016 can't compete with the budgets of blockbuster special effects movies. But IDK, maybe I'm wrong and other TV shows have noticeably better CG special effects. Stranger Things is the newest special-effects-having TV that I've seen in a very long time.

I too have a big long (red, metal) shoehorn that I keep hanging near my front door, as well as a travel shoehorn. I have also been made fun of by visiting "friends" for owning said shoehorns. I didn't know shoehorn ownership was ao mockable but clearly it is so. (Chris's endorsements so far have eerily all been for things I have myself evangelized to my friends, at some point. This includes his recent endorsement in another thread for learning to make miso soup. I'm sorry for possibly making it a little weird by not keeping this to myself)

Similar to you, most of my 'complaints' about this game aren't really complaints, just things that I'd wish for because I think they would be cool. Like, I do wish there were more enemy types – one of the joys of past Zeldas was, when you came to a new area or dungeon the environment would of course be different, but the set of enemies you could encounter would be different too. You don't really get that in BotW, and I miss it. But also, despite relatively fewer enemy types, enemy encounters in BotW play out in way more diverse ways than any other Zelda. That's due to stuff like the physics system, obviously, but also how most enemies can wield several different weapon types with different damage values and elemental effects, etc etc. So I don't think the game NEEDS more enemy types, I just want them anyway. Same with shrines all looking the same: before BotW, one of the most obvious advantages 3D zeldas had over 2D is how aesthetically unique they could make each dungeon (I'm basically describing the only great thing about Twilight Princess, which I liked), and BotW has almost none of that. But if that had to happen to get me a fantastic open overworld, I will gladly take that trade.

I'm not super duper far into BotW (2 beasts, ~25 shrines), because the last several weeks haven't been an opportune time in my life to put a ton of hours into a video game. But I've been playing it since it came out and I'm still borderline-embarrassingly enamored with it. I'm afraid of the inevitable point where I get bored and burnt out, but: with every other open world game I've ever played, I got burnt out way earlier than where I am now in BotW. I'm trying to reconcile that with the fact that all THOSE games had a much more regimented progression of abilities, and one of the biggest complaints I see made about BotW is that a lack of that kind of progression leads to fatigue in the second half of the game. We'll see, I guess, but I never even made it to the second half of all those games so I honestly think this 'progression' thing is overrated.

The grip buttons are great. People make no sense.

The very existence of the monkey island remasters annoys me, in that they're the most likely way anyone new to those games is going to experience them. And they're so much worse, especially the first one. I agree with Simon, though, that the root of the problem is redrawing/"remastering" the visuals of those games is a bad idea, even if you "do it well". You could in theory do a modern remake of MI1 that looked better than the original while staying true-enough, if you let yourself take the right liberties. Doing so with MI2 would be insulting: that game already looked amazing. It feels depressingly appropriate that a company with Lucas in its name would produce the remasters that we got.

I find the localization for every unvoiced line to be really good, while the localization for every voiced line ranges from tolerable to distractingly bad. It could just be that the VO highlights how unnatural sounding the localized dialog sounds when read out loud, and surely that's part of it. But I do also think the writing and localization teams must have had more leeway with the unvoiced lines to make more interesting choices.

"Calamity Ganon" IS definitely a bad name, but it's made slightly better in the context of the names of the other four main level bosses. Slightly.

After so much glowing, drooling praise from pretty much everywhere else, this was an appropriately tempering perspective to read. He seems to have a really quite comprehensive dislike for this game.

I have communicated my position badly: I have encountered this as a straw-argument before, but no, I haven't encountered any real people who say this.

I've encountered countless straw people like that, for sure.

"sports cream"

After missing out on adding a vocal backing track to that one Idle Thumbs theme with all the backing vocals, there was no way I wasn't gonna be in that phone book.

this is currently my most highly anticipated video game (mostly because lately I'm only ever in the mood for small-scale, slow-paced video game experiences... but also this looks like it will be good)

I think the only real way this joke plays is if you host a screening.

I've been re-watching these over the last month with some friends who haven't seen them, but we haven't gotten to 7 yet. My second viewing of these movies really re-enforces how much better the 5th movie is than all the others. It's really a gem, buried in the middle of an average-to-mediocre series.

I recently rewatched a few eps of childhood favorite TV show Jeeves and Wooster and this is the theme song of that show: ...did ALL late 80s/early 90s TV shows have this kind of theme music??

Haven't listened to the pod yet, but I'm seconding Chris' endorsement of the 60s Batman TV show; I recently received them on disk for my birthday and mannnn I love them so goddamn much. There may be a bit of nostalgia involved (I watched this show a lot as a small child), and I've enjoyed other more serious (or self-serious) versions of Batman too, but Adam West w/ Burt Ward is by far my favorite Batman. I particularly love how almost-cripplingly servile he is to the letter of the law, all the way down to needing to find a legally designated parking spot for the batcar. Ughhh it's so good.

http://kotaku.com/pokemon-moon-and-sun-logos-pop-up-1761230439 We know absolutely nothing yet! But maybe we will tomorrow. Pokemon is the only series I care about slash actually play that even approaches AssCreed/COD levels of sequalization. I can't help but pay attention to each new game but I also kinda wish they happened slightly less frequently. That said, who even knows when this thing is coming out anyway?

That's a great video. I really enjoyed that video. Here's a bonus video of stray obvservations and more review-ey criticism that he made, also worth a watch: I'm with Twig, The Witness aint perfect and I can certainly list things I don't like about it, but no video game has left the same kind of impression on me in years.

I like Letterboxd, I am dium on Letterboxd. I said it before in another thread, but I've found the practice of keeping a movie diary to be quite valuable; it's noticeably enhanced how I engage with movies (in that I think about them beyond simply 'was I not entertained?').

I saw this for the first time yesterday and got the impression that I'd have loved it as a teen... but of course it's impossible to know. I could just be remembering my extreme fondness for Grim Fandango at that age and projecting from there.

I'm so thankful that I don't listen to podcasts while I drive, or while doing anything that would prevent me from skipping through ad segments. Since I don't mind spending the extra attention required to hit the skip button a few times (or a lot of times, as is increasingly the case), ad reads are pretty much a non-issue for me.

Clip sounds like an Idle Thumbs clip. (that's good)

From what I gather from the onslaught of geeky pop culture media that surrounds me at all times: your assumptions about Archie are historically correct but, lately, there's been more dicking-around with the Archie formula than not-dicking-around.