Gwardinen

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by Gwardinen

  1. Posted

    23 hours ago, Roderick said:

    The best part, though, is the precious video real estate spent on the operation of the antique camera with all its knobs and twists. I can picture the Campo Santo folks obsessing over getting all of that right.

     

    Yes! The fact that most of the climactic scene of the trailer is just a long animation of setting up an old film camera made me so happy. :tup:

  2. Posted

    6 hours ago, Nappi said:

    I was quite excited about Tacoma and liked it quite a bit, but finally it didn't leave nearly as lasting an impression on me as Gone Home.

     

    The same must be true for me because I totally failed to put it in my list, despite actually quite enjoying it. It wasn't as meaningful to me as Gone Home, but I was definitely engaged while playing it. If I were to revise my list I might swap it in for Shadow of War, which was fun to screw around with but since neither the story nor the endgame was compelling it was almost more of a toy to me than anything else. I would probably keep Hellblade at #10 because I feel I want to recognise the game that at least tried to say something about mental illness and used excellent performances to do so, despite the fact that actually playing that game was not particularly great.

  3. Posted

    I think my top 10 broadly shakes out like this:

     

    1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
    2. What Remains of Edith Finch
    3. Horizon Zero Dawn
    4. Total Warhammer 2
    5. Persona 5
    6. For Honor
    7. Injustice 2
    8. Assassin's Creed: Origins
    9. Middle-earth: Shadow of War
    10. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

     

    I've talked about What Remains of Edith Finch in another thread, and it's oddly Breath of the Wild that needs more explanation. I haven't traditionally been the biggest fan of Nintendo - I don't have a problem with Nintendo games by any means, but I haven't personally owned a non-handheld Nintendo console since the SNES. The praise for BotW was so effusive that I borrowed a friend's Wii U to try it out for myself, and boy was I not disappointed.

     

    I can't remember the last time I enjoyed exploring a world so much, getting into weird little scrapes and seeing the bizarre, janky physics and systems interactions that I would normally never associate with Nintendo. I was also very impressed with the subtlety and restraint with which the story was told, and gathering the memories of Zelda genuinely led to meaningful character moments. The themes of the world in terms of narrative, art design and musical composition were melancholy and wonderful in equal measure. I honestly didn't expect to be as impressed with the game as I was, and I was very glad to be proven wrong.

     

    A couple caveats about other entries on the list; For Honor is only as high as it is because I had a dedicated group of friends that I was playing it with a lot around launch, and Shadow of War is only as high as it is because I skipped the last act and watched the ending on YouTube.

     

    Finally, there are two games I haven't put enough time into yet, but could potentially make their way on:
    Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
    Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus

  5. Posted

    2 hours ago, SecretAsianMan said:

    Plot is probably the least interesting part but since I'm such a stickler for it, is there an issue seeing Ragnarok if I didn't see the previous Thor?

     

    No. The only relevant plot point from Thor 2 is re-described almost immediately.

     

    11 hours ago, Mawd said:

    Waaaaay better than Guardians. Both movies are whacky but TR goes over and above. I think it's plotting was a lot better too.

     

    I felt the other way about it - a lot of this film read to me as a desperate grab at recreating Guardians of the Galaxy's success by aping its style visually, audibly and comedically. Which isn't to say that it didn't succeed a lot of the time, and I'll take a fun, light-hearted superhero (really more sci-fi) romp over the endless grinding misery of most of DC's attempts any day.

  7. Posted

    In principle I like the idea of telling different kinds of stories in that universe... but that trailer was awful. Is it just that all trailers are bad now? I'm genuinely asking for the opinion of someone who might watch more than me, because in the rare cases I actually watch a film trailer now I'm almost always disappointed and vaguely grossed out by it.

  10. Posted

    I'm not sure whether it's been brought up in this thread before, but I just watched the Big Sick and absolutely loved it. It's the semi-fictionalised story of stand up comedian/actor Kumail Nanjiani meeting his now wife. It's really funny without making the dramatic plot unbelievable - which I suppose might be helped by most of it having actually happened. Just very well written and performed, and genuinely enjoyable to watch.

  11. Posted

    42 minutes ago, Salacious Snake said:

    I kinda read the Klingons as republicans with their directive to stay Klingon, or whatever. It gave off a real MAGA/America First vibe for me. They're trying to build the wall, etc

     

     

    I could see that. They're trying to stay culturally pure, which I guess is something someone who was very anti-immigration might be concerned about. There's definitely an implication that they want to return to the Good Old Days that may or may not ever have existed.

  12. Posted

    10 hours ago, dartmonkey said:

    They were more interesting to me as surrogates for the Russians in TOS, but it seems that's being modified for Discovery.

     

    I dunno. It was fine. I'm open to anything. I just hope Discovery does some actual discovering!

     

    Well now that I think about it, how much is it being modified for Discovery? The Klingons are now represented as religious zealots with a vaguely Egyptian theme who hate the western culture of Starfleet... upon reflection, I'm suddenly wondering whether this is them being recast as America's current "great enemy" of Islamic fundamentalists.

     

    Also, yeah, after I watched the episodes I was pretty much thinking that the series title is currently nonsensical. Here's hoping that's a temporary problem.

  14. Posted

    Yeah I can second the little UI improvements - lots of minor quality of life changes have been made since the first game. Originally I was thinking that I'd play this for the new factions, but keep the first game installed for the old ones and the old map. Having actually played a bit, though, it's definitely a different and better experience. Hopefully the combined map for all the races from both games will come soon and be enjoyable to play.

     

    I'm not deep enough yet into the campaign to say whether the new stuff really fixes the age old strategy game issue of "I've clearly won this, but I have at least 100 turns left to just grind it out", as they were claiming it would.

  15. Posted

    I tried a bit of a friend's copy and just found it a bit overwhelming. I had this problem with the first game too; since it's so open and gives so little direction and literally every NPC has dialogue and a trade inventory, I just end up feeling tired by it all. Also, as Nappi said, just how long the game is also contributes to the sense of "there's just too much here and I can't tell what is the stuff I'll enjoy". This is all exacerbated by the writing style which, while entertaining, is outrageously effusive. Characters often speak in paragraphs, and the line reads tend to be a bit slow and exaggerated as well. Original Sin was the first voice acted game in years that I'd repeatedly skipped through dialogue in.

  16. Posted

    4 hours ago, marginalgloss said:

     

      Hide contents

    Cersei has a new baby. It turns out to be a dwarf. The Mountain, being basically a reanimated corpse, is vulnerable to being possessed by the army of the dead. He turns on Cersei: she is royally hoisted. Sandor Clegane tries to take him down but he can't quite manage it; he's badly wounded but Arya saves him at the last moment, and kills the Mountain. 

     

    I actually quite like this idea. I'm going to be disappointed if it doesn't go down like that.

  18. Posted

    3 hours ago, jennegatron said:

    I'm listening through the show a second time. I just finished the Rockport Express arc, and I'm struck by how much better later episodes are. Also it struck me how long Griffin actually has been planning this.

     

    I haven't finished the series yet - just started the finale arc - but he did say at some point on a bonus episode or something that he had basically sketched out the overall plot by the end of the first proper arc. I'm not sure whether he meant Gerblins or the one after, but either way, yeah, he seems to have been trying to figure out how to get here for quite a while now.

  19. Posted

    1 hour ago, Salacious Snake said:

    Yeah, although in the early (Roddenberry) days of TNG, they wanted it to depict a future of causal space banging among mature colleagues. 

     

    Shit was envisioned as super horny. 

     

    Is that why Riker and Troi have this really ill-defined and barely explored on again off again relationship? Or was it just that they made their relationship whatever was convenient to the plot at the time?

  20. Posted

    On 08/08/2017 at 3:08 PM, James said:

    I've really enjoyed Exquisite Corps so far. I wish it were more frequent!

     

    In principle I like the idea but the first two episodes have actually just been very frustrating for me. I don't necessarily need everyone who's recording something to be a pro player, but when they don't even bother to read basic instructions it does kind of bother me. Hopefully as time goes on and they get more familiar with the game this will be less of an issue.

  21. Posted

    15 hours ago, TheLastBaron said:

    I'm watching the DS9 episode where they go onto the original Enterprise with a lot of TOS footage and this is an enjoyable episode.  The stuff about the Klingons that no one recognizes as Klingons and Worf just says 'It's a long story, we don't talk about it with outsiders" and that's the end of that was great. 

     

    It's also kind of an indictment of the later series Enterprise when viewed nowadays, because Enterprise actually did try to retcon the different looks of Klingons. This seems to be a trap prequels fall into a lot; attempting to explain away what were clearly just design choices with in-universe fiction that wasn't really necessary or desired.

  23. Posted

    I'm also not overly enthused by the idea of another prequel. I'm not sure why they keep going that way.

     

    Oh well, we'll see how it turns out - I'd still like to see some more good Star Trek in my life!

     

    Edit: Oh, I also didn't realise until watching that trailer that they seem to be going with an actual protagonist this time, and that said protagonist is not the captain. That's... potentially interesting? But not necessarily hugely "Star Trek".