Mera'din

Watched 'Color Out of Space' and 'Terminator: Dark Fate' over the weekend. Color Out of Space was better than I was hoping for. Lovecraft's work is notoriously difficult to translate to other mediums and this is probably one of the best examples I've seen. They changed what they needed to to modernize it and make it work for a movie, but did a wonderful job of keeping the spirit of the story intact. Some really cool visual effects and cinematography all around. Definitely worth seeing if you're a Lovecraft fan. Terminator: Dark Fate was also better than I was expecting but not what I hoped it would be considering Cameron's involvement. Still can't hold a candle to the original two, but I don't think anyone expected it to. Feel like this movie would have been a LOT more interesting if we didn't have like 4 other Terminator sequels floating around between 2 and this one to muddy the waters so much. There was some good content, but in the end it felt a little too much like concepts retooled from the original T3 into a soft reboot. The opening, which appears to be the thing that set most people against the film overall, was probably the most interesting part to me. Though it did kind of undermine the series as a whole, that was probably the point. As much as I liked what they did, it did ultimately serve to essentially rip the spirit of the series to pieces before the movie had even begun. The de-aging tech used in the movie was the best I've seen to date though by far. It was good enough that at first I thought maybe the scene they used at the beginning might have been an unused alternate ending from T2. XD

In amusingly related news, rumor is that the Avengers game pushed back to September to avoid releasing in the same month as Cyberpunk (was also sandwiched on the other side by Last of Us 2 I believe) and then Cyberpunk moved to September as well so that game is still gonna get fucked.

Yep. Like I said in the other topic, I got some breathing room now. Just need Bloodlines 2 to announce a solid release date nowhere near Cyberpunk and I should be good to go. XD

It also means I'll actually be able to play like 3 other games that come out in the same time frame. XD

Damnit. Not even sure how I put the wrong number. >_>

FFVII Remake has been delayed to April 10th. Reason given was the general "we want a little extra time to put as much polish on this as we can" type of thing. This is putting it dangerously close to the release of Cyberpunk 2066. Early March had been the perfect slot for it honestly, now almost all games I want in the first half of the year are coming out within a few weeks of each other. Here's the their full message:

2.) Gris Really nice game. BEAUTIFUL art style with a great atmosphere and music. Very somber game. I've played a lot of games with pretty much the exact same themes and storytelling style, but the art and atmosphere of it are what really makes it stand out. Starts off with you basically just walking but slowly starts to add platforming and puzzles with new abilities that keep it from getting stale. Not a lot of replay value, but worth a play if you like heavily symbolic games with good atmosphere. A great game to play when trying to chill.

I'm more interested in Morbius for the actors than anything else, but that looked at least not bad so I'm willing to give it a shot. That end bit was intriguing though.

At the very least give him more stuff to be in charge of. Everything he's done has been pretty solid and been almost universally well received. I haven't seen Resistance, but I also haven't seen anyone raging over it either so it must be at least fine. Only thing of his that seemed to get railed at all was the Clone Wars movie and that seemed like it had more to do with general feelings over the direction of Star Wars in general at the time than anything else and doesn't appear to apply anymore (though it's probably still his weakest entry). Far as I know he's got full oversight on all their animated stuff now, but his work on The Mandalorian seems like proof he can handle live action stuff just as well.

Thank god. Someone finally did a good one. This is the 4th "metal cover" I've seen for the song and all the others were not that great. Was hoping Skar Productions would do one finally so there would be a good one floating around, but this will work. Forgot to post again after I finished the season. Overall I was really happy with it. Only part that bothered me that much was the Battle of Sodden Hill. They kind of butchered that whole thing and it was gimped pretty hard. Wondering if it wasn't a budget issue honestly because it was kind of blah compared to what I was expecting after the rest of the series. X_x With the attention the show is receiving though, they'll hopefully have a nicer budget going forward.

I honestly don't think they should. I couldn't care less about the old EU at this point. It's the reason I never got into Star Wars when I was younger. I'm all for them pulling in stuff from it for the new EU, but be realistic. That's not something they're EVER going to change due to the movies, shows, games, comics, and books that they've but a ton of money into and that they have full creative control over that will contradict that every step of the way in some cases.

They can obviously manage. Rogue One was a great movie all around. Overall I don't feel any different about the new trilogy than I did either of the others. They're fine. All 3 trilogies are best for being jumping boards for everything else that gets made. I honestly think that's why the EU (both old and new) has always been better though. Broader scope, less restrictions, more creativity (usually). Getting away from the whole 'Skywalker' scope of things can only help in terms of movies. Also, if you're going to do a trilogy maybe, I don't know, LET ONE PERSON BE IN CHARGE OF ALL OF IT? It was rumored there was GOING to be a trilogy set in the Old Republic era, but the guys that were going to be doing that dropped out because they had too much on their plate. Hopefully someone else will do that though. I agree that Kennedy needs to not be in charge though. Jesus fuck. They have been pulling random bits from the old EU for years. The Hammerhead cruiser, Thrawn, etc. Is she really that fucking oblivious? X_x Maybe give Dave Filoni the reigns for story decisions? He's the best thing that's happened to Star Wars in a long time IMO, and is great at putting long running plots and story arches together. Also seems to be a fan of reviving old EU stuff where he can.

30.) Eventide: Slavic Fable Simple little Hidden Object Puzzle/Adventure game. Don't usually go out of my way to play something like this but wanted something straight forward and quick to do on occasion between big games. Normally the kind of thing I'd play on my phone instead of on my computer, but it was like 1/3 the price on Steam vs. the Play Store. Wound up on my radar because a person I watch on Youtube sometimes for Vampire the Masquerade stuff works for the company as an artist and I was curious. It was fine. Nothing overly challenging, but required a decent amount of thought to get through the puzzles. Was a nice palate cleanser before I jump into something bigger again.

$50 from the in-laws, and my wife got me a new Kindle. Finally. After I've been hinting to her for 2 years now that my (now nearly 7 years) old one is starting to not function the best. After like the third time of her telling me she has no idea what to get me, I was just like: Here. You're getting me this. I've been hinting for 2 years. Her response was "... Oooooohhhhh. That's what you were doing." She is legendarily bad with presents 90% of the time. I can't fault her for it though since I usually just buy most things I really want whenever they come out so I don't leave her many options.

Fekkin' knew it. Also, semi-canonizing some of the EU Sith is good shit. Hope they take that further.

29.) Death Stranding Was an interesting game overall. Story was batshit crazy, but it kept me guessing and there were a lot of interesting elements to it and a whole lot of crazy pseudo-science that was kind of fun to dig through. I wouldn't call it a GREAT game, but it was solid and really managed to shine in a couple places. The gameplay itself is something that, on paper, sounds like it would be absolutely terrible, but ended up being really solid and I never quite grew bored of it. Just as I thought it was going to start getting tedious it would throw something new at me that keep it from stagnating too badly. The semi-online element was really cool and probably the most interesting and dynamic part of the game. Trudging through lonely countryside or dealing with crazy ghost things always seemed a little less daunting when you could see the efforts of other people to traverse the same obstacles and it made for a really cool social experiment kind of thing. Overall I was pretty happy with the game. It's definitely something that not everyone would enjoy but I had a lot of fun with it and look forward to seeing what else Kojima can do when he's let off the leash like this.

That is awesome. I'm 5 episodes in and it is everything I could have wanted from a Witcher series. The casting is damn near PERFECT. You can tell Cavill really enjoys the role and wanted to do it right. Probably my ONLY complaint and it stems less from how I view it and more with how I anticipate others may view it is the haphazard time skipping they're doing. Episodes have subsequent scenes that are set DECADES apart and it's constantly jumping back and forth between present, distant past, and semi-distant past with no indication of it unless you're paying attention which is probably going to annoy and confuse people that don't really know much about what they're watching. For anyone who doesn't know the series well and plans to watch it: Anything with Ciri is essentially "current" time. Assume everything else is the past (more or less) possibly excepting a couple things with Geralt. It was hard enough to tell that at first I thought maybe they just completely squished all the events together instead of stretching them over 80+ years of time like Lord of the Rings did, but then it became clear that was not the case. It's a bit jarring even knowing everything. Other than that it's relatively accurate to the books. Only a few things I noticed that they took liberties with but they clearly care about the source material even then. I'm actually a little surprised they stuck with Jaskier's original name though. Even the English translations of the books renamed him Dandelion and anyone familiar with the games knows him by that name as well. I'm ultimately happy they did the time jumping thing though since it means they could adapt some of my favorite short stories. The fact that they were able to do "A Question of Price" and "The Last Wish" made me unbelievably happy. Seems like they don't plan on rushing this either so they'll have time to really do the story justice if it keeps getting renewed. Should be able to get a solid 4-6 seasons out of it depending on how they do it.

Really enjoyed it. There were a number of rough spots, but I feel like most of those were trying to recover from some of the weird story choices in TLJ, working around Carrie Fisher's death, or both. If they had a consistent script writer/story planner through all 3 movies I feel like it would have gone a LOT better, but I'm happy with what we got all things considered. They were able to do a lot more with Leia than I was expecting since they said they wouldn't CG her into it and would only make use of unused footage from the last two movies.

Some days you make no sense. I still love you though. ??

You do realize he has no part in nominating or voting for anything, right? He just runs it. Nominations are done by outside parties that are part of the industry (various gaming news outlets, "influencers" and things like that) from all around the world and voting is a mix of said jury and public fan voting. He did an AMA about the show a week or so before hand and got asked a ridiculous number of times about stuff like that as well as answering accusations of favoritism along those lines. Death Stranding didn't even win that many awards. They even have a list of the 'jury' that does the nominating/voting on the website: https://thegameawards.com/voting-jury' I wouldn't have touched the show that Spike did with a 10ft. pole, but he's done a good job with this one IMO.

That one definitely stood out. When it first showed her I was like ? Wasn't sure it was actually supposed to be Senua or if it was just a similar style/theme considering the developer until it showed the title though. I want to see more from some of the others before I decide anything though. Godfall could have potential and I'm interested in seeing what New World could be like (though I won't hold my breath on that one). That Fast & Furious game looks so ridiculously dated though. WTF even was that? XD There were some fun parts otherwise during it too. The bit with the Muppets was hilarious and seeing Ikumi Nakamura again was everything I hoped it would be. Feel like the awards themselves were all over the place though. Like some of the eSports shit they didn't even give any correlation for what games the people were even known for so it was like... K. Glad to see Disco Elysium win a bunch of awards though. Definitely deserves it from everything I've seen. Kind of hoped Control had won more but it did get one so I was happy about that. I actually bought a couple of games that I was holding off on or hadn't heard of after seeing stuff about them through the Awards though so I guess they're doing their job. XD

28.) Rise of the Tomb Raider Been slowly going through this for my daughter since she really likes the story and finally beat it yesterday. Was solid entertainment. Action sequences and climbing parts are consistently fun and only sometimes frustrating and I feel like they did a good job of improving upon the kind of stuff that Uncharted was always good at. Story was interesting overall. Nothing terribly groundbreaking in these games but they are pretty solid all around and fun as a one and done sort of series to play. Picked up the newest one on Black Friday for $15 so will probably start that for her next weekend.

He also wrote it, and is the son of the guy who directed and produced the original 2 so that's probably a good sign. This is probably one of the best outcomes we could have hoped for after Harold Ramis died. I'm certainly intrigued.

Pretty much everything you're bitching about has an explanation. Not always a good one, but there is always one, mostly because Kojima felt the need to give a story explanation for basically every single game mechanic that exists in the game. Even the tutorial stuff to a small extent. Sam has been doing freelance work for years, and Deadman didn't know him from a hole in the ground outside of supposed reputation (and the fact that they're clearly using technology that didn't exist when he was with Bridges I 10 years prior). Had to get that job orientation in. One of workers at one of the places you stop treats you like your some brand new jackass too at one point and later apologizes after he learns who you are. Also, most of his games have things (characters or otherwise) with stupid ass names. Usually in an attempt to create some kind of deeper meaning that just comes off as awkward 90% of the time. How is any of this unexpected? Nearly all of them are code names anyway and reasons are given for them during the game. More than likely it's even more ridiculous in this game because this time Kojima's the top dog on all decision making and there was nobody to keep him from venting all the absolute batshit crazy floating around in his head. Is the story some sort of ground breaking art? No. It's a ridiculous, garbled mystery machine just like every one of the Metal Gear Solid games was, but that's exactly what i was expecting and I'm enjoying every second of it. Finally starting to put some of the pieces together at the point I'm at and am interested to see if it will make any kind of sense by the end (though it will probably end up being even more confusing I'm sure).