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Chris

Idle Weekend April 30, 2016: PAX Americana

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Idle Weekend April 30, 2016:

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PAX Americana

The Weekenders have a full plate this time around, with PAX stories of fake wrestling, playing Pyre, and taking in the atmosphere of an overcrowded show floor. Later, Rob dives into the wonderful Mad Max: Fury Road, and Danielle gets her secret decoder ring ready for a wild marathon of The Americans.

Discussed: PAX, E3, Pyre, Final Fantasy 10, Outlast 2, Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing Transformed, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Americans

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Just want to say how happy I was to hear y'all talk about The Americans, especially the bit about Alison Wright. That show is extraordinary, as is her performance.

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The primary purpose of E3 was to sell games to distributors; WalMart, EB Games, CompUSA, and all those.  The press was a distant secondary consideration, and the general public was barely ever a concern to them.  What's murdered it is digital distribution; distributors are no longer relevant enough to bother with for the publishers.  E3 has been gradually on the way out for years.

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A rather slight Mad Max Fury Road spoiler

The movie does deserve praise for its strong female characters. I do think it goes beyond that, and I absolutely love how comfortable the movie is with its characters. The sparseness of the narrative storytelling allows the characters to be birthed and developed with relatively economic moments. This self-confidence is also very evident in the fact that the movie practically skips the titular character's one true action hero scene. I'm referring to the scene in the blue tinted quagmire, when Max walks off screen to take care of the car that is trailing the rig. There's sounds of gunfire, an explosion in the distance and momentarily a bloodied Max emerges from the dust with ammo belts, steering wheel and a boot for Nux. A lesser movie would have needed to show that action scene. Miller had the confidence to merely remind us that Max is a supernatural action hero, and focus on what is interesting in this story.

In fact the whole short sequence before that is full of movie magic. Especially the wonderful short moment, where Max hands the final sniper shot to Furiosa. All of these characters are survivors and fighters by spirit.

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I agree if you are having fun with a game, even if you didn´t finish it or are close to it, that still make the game worth it, I played Daggerfall a lot, and even if I didn´t finish it, the experience and time still was worth it.

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Tidus was vastly better at blitzball than anyone else in FFX, actually. The reason being that he can unlock (via an early story event, which I believe you can miss or fail) a special technique called the Jecht Shot that is ridiculously overpowered and that he can casually abuse. Part of the strategy ends up being forcing yourself to use other players so they can level up too.

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Tidus was vastly better at blitzball than anyone else in FFX, actually. The reason being that he can unlock (via an early story event, which I believe you can miss or fail) a special technique called the Jecht Shot that is ridiculously overpowered and that he can casually abuse. Part of the strategy ends up being forcing yourself to use other players so they can level up too.

 

The real reason the first match is so hard is because the rest of your team is absolutely TERRIBLE.  The only way I was able to win was to use the Jecht Shot just before Tidus takes himself out of the match to let Wakka play and spend the rest of the time passing the ball back and forth among my own players, hoping the other team never got a chance to shoot.  It probably took me four or five tries before I finally won.  I forget what you get for winning but I remember being really disappointed because it wasn't worth the effort and annoyance.

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So, I have started watching 'The Americans' because of the recommendations here and on Twitter. I am wondering if it was the hype but I have watched 4 episodes and am now a bit deflated.

 

The problem with this show is that any tension that exists for the primary characters is almost non-existent because it is a series with a run. When Keri Russel's character talks about being afraid of being found out it has no impact because I know there are 10 more episodes of the season left. So the series rests on the strength of its tertiary characters - the ones that you know could actually be in jeopardy. This meant that I found it an uneven run. I didn't care about the central conflict of most of the episodes but really cared about Viola and her son who get dragged into it just becase she happened to be a cleaner in an important office.

 

There are some great performances in there for sure, I like both the FBI agent and the two 'Americans' but I'd almost prefer it if the tone had been comedic instead serious.

 

What I did enjoy about the podcast was Danielle's take on communist equality.

 

I travelled through Vietnam recently and you can buy a lot of reprinted communist propaganda against the American invasion and occupation. They are really pretty and what struck me was that women are very predominantly featured in almost every poster. The thrust is that communism is in everyone and they need to resist American with every inch of their fibre. It is a very attractive propostion and a powerful one.

 

Weirdly - Vietnam (followed by Cambodia) is probably has some of the most overt, institutionalised sexism I've seen in a while. Men will sit and drink at the table and the women will stand on the periphery. At one hostel I was invited to join in the drinking and when my partner showed up and joined in all the men were not so much shocked as bemused (like 'what are these crazy westerners doing?').

 

So, yeah, the equality of the communist message seems limited to motivating both sexes to die for the cause but as soon as that is out of the way - there is still a hierachy at which women remain at the bottom.

 

ADDING: Sorry Rob, I don't think 'The Americans' is the best TV on at the moment, not even by a long shot.

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