Lurker > masterpug53

I saw it pop up when I was in D+ last night getting ready to put on a sleeper Simpsons ep, and made the big-brained decision to "watch a few minutes of it before falling asleep." Of course I watched the whole thing and lost 2 1/2 hours of precious sleep on a work night.

It was good. I wouldn't call it stellar, but I liked it well enough on its own. The line "You told me that you wanted to be the one everyone else could count on when they made a mistake" got me in the feels pretty good.

I wonder if it was in any way intentional how much Valentina was channeling Tulsi Gabbard in this movie: she had the look, a similar-enough position in the government, and she...wasn't very bright. I'm not sure why I expected competence out of this character, but the entire movie was one fuckup after another on her part and it was only dumb luck that she avoided a beatdown at the end of the movie. Amanda Waller she ain't.

Wow, day one buy for me! There's definitely no chance that I'll get absolutely sick of it after five hours and never want to play it again!

"She died doing what she loved: being a moron."

TMOG posted...

I have so much nostalgia for 8, it's one of my favorites in the series.

The "it's always been considered bad" hate for it is definitely revisionary history, and yes, mostly fueled by Spoony's review.

People who were actually alive when it released will remember that it was really well-received.

Yeah, there's a reason why Squall (excuse me...*rolls eyes*...Leon) was the de facto 'main' FF character in Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, and it wasn't just because he was the best looking guy there.

Of course 8 only had two characters repping compared to 7's 5(?), but that's a testament to the fact that even when 8 love was at its peak, it was always sort of the Legend of Korra to 7's A:TLA in that it was a more divisive entry that rested its narrative squarely on the main character's shoulders, and as a consequence ended up with a weaker ensemble cast. So to love FF8, you pretty much had to love Squall as a character; of course this was still a few years before hating on 'emo' became an established trend, so at the time a lot of gamers did love and relate to Squall.

Also, I too was going to suggest that 9's cartoony character design contributed to making a dent in its sales before quite a few posters beat me to the punch. That was of course the same era in which the gaming world lost its collective shit over Toon Link / "Celda."

BlackScythe0 posted...

I've had people on this board tell me the game was hard. I was 11 I think when I played it remember learning about the islands closest to heaven/hell grinded to level 100 and had no problems beating it as a preteen.

My biggest problem with 8's combat was always that it was tedious, not hard. Basic attack was usually underpowered, casting magic ruined my perfect 100's (and was also fairly underpowered), and sitting through GF animations got boring fast. Things improve a bit once you figure out how to game the Limit Break system, but there's still a certain level of tediousness getting it set up (plus it just plain feels cheesy using Ultimate Skybeam Blade Attack on everything under the sun). Turn-based RPG combat with random encounters inherently tends to be tedious to a certain degree, so anything that piles onto that tedium will sour the experience.

AurochSpirit posted...

It was years after my first playthrough when there's a scene on the Ragnarok with Squall talking to Kiros and Ward that made me suspect that Laguna is Squall's father then I researched it and found out that was right. Couldn't believe it took me that many years to work it out.

As far as the soundtrack, I'd say it's the best in terms of battle themes and I would love to live in Balamb Garden

IIRC the scene went something like:
Kiros (to Squall): "You look just like your mother."
*Ward gestures*
Kiros: "Ward says 'thank goodness you don't look much like your father.'"

Even when I was a kid that was a dead giveaway for me. And Laguna conveniently carrying Squall's TT card put to bed any lingering doubt (especially considering that Rinoa also happens to have her card carried by her own father).

misterbum posted...

I may give it the crown for best OST from the PS1 era. But above 6? Nah man, just nah, I cant.

I'd struggle to even give it that tbh. I'm typically down on IX's big plot moments that everyone else adores, but I'll be the first to admit that the soundtrack carries the ever-loving fuck out of those moments as well as the entire game in general.

Picking a favorite soundtrack out of FF's prime run is like picking your favorite children, but while I love 8's soundtrack, I struggle to think of moments during the game where it elevated an otherwise-good or even mediocre moment to the stratosphere the way 6, 7, 9, and 10's soundtracks did.

Though I'll at least throw 8 a bone and say that Balamb Garden taking flight and Squall giving his speech to Balamb during the Galbadia battle were decently elevated by the accompanying tracks.

ConfusedTorchic posted...

8 literally sold more than 10 did lol

For whatever it's worth, iirc VIII was the 4th (?) highest selling game on the PSX; meanwhile, Internet darling IX didn't even crack the top 15.

TomClark posted...

I know that it's controversial for me to say that it's my favourite FF game, but can we at least all get on the same page and agree that it's got the best soundtrack in the series?

Erm, no. It's got plenty of stellar tracks that I love dearly, but it doesn't beat 6, 7, 9, or 10.

"DRAlNAGE, YOU BOY!!"

It's a very polite way of saying "I catch all the little fuck-ups that everyone else is too busy and / or self-important to notice."

Got a chance to sit down and watch this last night. "We appreciate what you did Andor, but..." got a belly laugh out of me.

I too was worried that Andor's excellence would diminish ANH (I hadn't watched the OT in close to a decade and decided to give them all + RO a spin after Andor wrapped), but thankfully it went the other way. ANH's sequence of events feel a lot less like dumb luck with knowledge of all the ground-level sacrifice that made that moment possible, and I was actually pumped to see the Battle of Yavin for the first time since I was a kid.

The only thing that feels weird about ANH now in retrospect is that there's no sense of desperate urgency on the Yavin base. Like, everything has built up to this battle, this is your last hope to defeat the single greatest threat to life and liberty the galaxy has ever seen, you are all literally moments away from getting blown to smittereens...and yet the most anyone at the Yavin base can muster are the occasional concerned glances at each other. At least the space battle scenes still manage to convey the appropriate tension, so it's a minor nitpick.

IAmTheNakedMan posted...

https://youtu.be/JT0dCqe6R6o?si=0nGjtx_bt_mHIgKj

Dammit, beat me to it.

I feel confident that any controversy surrounding Ms Rachel can be boiled down thusly:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/9/907a47fa.png

Quite ironically looks more warm and personable than the real thing.

Sonixs posted...

I love how fast Vader talks in Episode 4 compared to the rest.

It's like they realized they needed to slow him down.

There's also that one bit in the beginning where he gets audibly angry / barking orders at his troopers just after choking the rebel captain. Definitely one of those 'still feeling out the character' moments that you get when a movie series is just starting out, but it did help make an otherwise-forgettable line memorable.

Yeah, I'm not putting too much stock in the hand thing. More just the general sense that he's aged terribly in the past year - Trump's acted like my late-stage Alzheimer's grandfather since 2017 at least, but now he finally looks the same as well.

DodogamaRayBrst posted...

I thought they blew up Coruscant in episode 7

IIRC it was some totally-not-Courscant planet that was supposed to be the seat of the New Republic but who cares it's gone now don't think too hard about it.

Google says the planet was Hosnian Prime (along with four other planets in the Hosnian system). Of course this being Star Wars, Hosnian Prime probably has a dozen wiki entries, two novels, and a prequel series in the works.

Yeah, I loved it. I never expected the ending to pay off as well as it did, and seeing it memed to hell and back has yet to dimimish my enjoyment of it (though I was lucky to watch it / go in blind before it reached that point of cultural oversaturation).

SaikyoStyle posted...

I trust the complicit media to do it for them.

The media owes its allegiance to money and ratings above all else; they are complicit with Trump because he is a neverending ratings cash cow. Trump's death - and all the fallout, hyperanalysis, and conspiracies that will go with it - will be one of the biggest news stories of the decade; not even Fox would opt to bury it.

I think it's more important that the moon landers believe in themselves.

Philip027 posted...

Wind Waker.

Its one potential flaw is that I'd say to have full effect it requires previous reading of Ocarina of Time (and ideally, some knowledge of the divergent timeline, one path of which started to be explored through Wind Waker). But let's face it, if you played this, you probably already played OoT or at least know about it.

This has always been my go-to example of proof that you don't need fancy cinematics to make a game opening capable of hitting you in the feels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDQLQpEAP3w

I was gonna say FF6, but thanks for reminding me of this one. This might contain the one instance of the classic Zelda fanfare that still manages to give me chills.

Rika_Furude posted...

trump is rich beyond your wildest dreams and has access to the most expensive hospitals and medical professionals in america, they can keep him on two feet on life support for years to come

The flipside of this is that Trump is the exact kind of vain wealthy celebrity who more than likely keeps on-hand the kind of "doctor" who got his degree from the very same Hollywood Upstairs Medical College that Dr. Nick did, whose job is to tell Trump exactly what he wants to hear and keep him swimming in whatever pills he wants. So he could potentially go the way of Elvis or Michael Jackson before any legitimate doctors can get to him and undo the damage.

I love the cop's "this is fine" expression in the background.

Also AI apparently doesn't get the point of a muzzle.

I mean, the main reason we or any other global power label their war branch as 'defense' is kind of a sick-joke attempt at plausible deniability; "oh, we'd never hit a country unless they hit us first, we promise!"

So Trump throwing up a giant middle finger to any attempt at subtlety is about as on-brand as it gets.

I remember a brighter time not so long ago when the Duck Dynasty patriarch got raked across the coals for saying shit just like this.

thronedfire2 posted...

gonna watch Ep 3 today

I think I'd probably drop 2 down to a 6-7/10? I thought about it more today while I was at work.

I'm genuinely surprised you enjoyed it enough to rank it that high tbh. AotC was for me when the shine really started to fall off the apple for the SW franchise. TPM for me had enough high points to help gloss over the flaws, but AotC committed the worst blockbuster sin there is by being flat-out boring to the point where even the hype moments couldn't make up for it overall.

Ivynn posted...

He wouldn't make all these EOs in the name "fighting America hate" if he didn't actually care about America. He clearly loves the country in some twisted way, I'm just curious what he loves about it since many of the things that make America "America" seem to contradict a lot of his own personal values (or lack thereof). I'm also talking about his "America First" supporters who also don't seem to respect what America stands for.

This instantly made me think of that Troy McClure line "sure I love you baby, just like I love Fresca! Isn't that enough?"

I'd say Trump loves America about as much as he loves his daily Big Mac: the only time his sense of love manifests is when someone tries to change it or tell him he can't have it.

Ted Lasso (though we'll have to see how much if at all S4 ruins this)

Charged151 posted...

You mean this?
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/8/8050adb2.jpg

I guarantee that the guy beneath the mask is also smiling and breathing heavily.

Probably the dinner scene in Nutty Professor when I was a kid.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


I didn't marathon them, but I tried rewatching all 3 trilogies a few years ago. I fell asleep halfway through AotC and didn't bother to go further. Last time I tried to make it through TRoS I passed out after around 40min.

That's ultimately why I give the ST a slight edge over the PT: with the former I can at least make it to the 3rd movie before I faint from boredom.

At least to OT held up imo. I recently burned through them after finishing Andor + Rogue One and I still love 'em.

I liked Romulus better than Prometheus but less than Alien: Sisyphus and Alien: Hephaestus. I'm excited for Alien: Odysseus though.

If the joke isn't clear, I've seen exactly one of the post-Ressurection Alien films and due to the naming convention I couldn't begin to remember which one it actually was.

All the more reason to play it safe by never owning nor flying an American flag.

mystic_belmont posted...

The game is not long if you play by the rules. It gets longer when people introduce house rules.

A game of Monopoly should not take more than an hour to play.

However, Monopoly's game mechanics are outdated and thus one should be playing better games.

Even an hour's a big ask for a lot of people, especially with the elimination factor where the first person out is left sitting on their hands until everyone else is finished.

Monopoly Deal hands typically take 15 min to complete; it's a lot easier to talk people into playing 3-4 hands of Deal rather than one game of traditional Monopoly, because that way everyone has a much greater chance to get a win under their belt.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_Deal

This is a great alternative to traditional Monopoly, mostly because it bypasses the thing people hate most about Monopoly (the long-ass playtime).

Yeah, I was just trying to sell my coworker on that movie the other day. Specifically with the line "When you're young it's all filet steaks, but when you get older you must settle for the cheaper cuts, which I find more flavorful."

Most of Wes Anderson's movies are a more well-rounded emsemble cast, but Ralph Fiennes carries the fuck out of that movie.

"Have you ever heard the tale of Darth Plagueis the Wise?"
"Darth Plagueis?"

Seman

Have they come up with a name for this reduced and simple facsimile of a human brain? I think "Vance" would be fitting.

Appearance-wise he's aged about ten years in the past year. He looks worse and worse in each photo taken.

At this point there should be an official rule of the internet that states any discussion about Star Wars in general will eventually devolve into a TLJ argument.

It's adorable when career trolls think they can just switch off their reputation at their own personal convenience and everyone else should just fall in line with it.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


Of course. He's the grown-up version of Dick the Birthday Boy.

You will never find a more peak snub than Nintendo releasing a "Booster Pass" that did not once feature Booster as a playable character.

Doe posted...

This is the one place I pump the brakes. RLM's brand isn't being hyper critical, and Mr Plinkett is pretty rarely brought out. Half in the Bag has a ton of positive movie recommendations.

Like if you're gonna be a critic, at some point you're going to have to criticize a thing that is really bad. That some of those videos were widely watched, I don't think it can be concluded from that that RLM is a major contributor to a "generation of hyper-critical viewers." If, indeed, such a thing actually exists, which I am skeptical of...

I should clarify that it's not necessarily RLM's fault that hypercriticalism became trendy; like another poster said, what they really did was teach a generation of fans to focus their prequel hate on something more in-depth than "kid Anakin sucks" and "Jar-Jar raped my childhood." Still, they were a major influence in the Youtube popculture criticsphere, and it's a natural result of some people walking away with the wrong lessons.

I never watched the show, only the movies later in life. I'd be lying if I said I didn't find most of it hilarious.

After all this time though I still want to know whose mother Ehren literally fucked for them to always stick him with the worst shit to do. Most of his bits would fit the legal definition of torture pretty much everywhere in the developed world.

For reference, here's a list of several things that are perfectly capable of being true all at the same time:

- Prequel hate existing looooong before the character of Mr. Plinkett ever chained his first callgirl to the radiator

- RLM offering well-reasoned and insightful critiques of not only the Prequels but the popular moviescape in general

- RLM, along with Cinemasins and the rest, helping shape an entire generation of viewers to be hyper-critical of their media to the point where they simply cannot enjoy a popcorn flick without obsessing over plotholes and pacing

- RLM possessing a not-insignificant amount of influence over movie culture, something they know all too well (they once bragged about having Kevin Feige as a subscriber)

- Disney being perfectly capable of making one boneheaded decision after another in regards to the SW franchise regardless of Youtuber influence

Please ignore Khlavic. He deliberately seeks out topics on subjects like this to troll; irritating enough when its about news stories and such, but now there's an extra layer of scuminess when he's attempting to troll a CEman looking for advice.

621 posted...

tbqh it's probably music to their ears too. the boos means that what they're trying to do (hurt people maga doesn't like) is working.

While I do agree that they are fueled by their enemies' hate more often than not, booing is still generally effective at getting under their thin skins. See the various times Trump was nearly brought to tears getting booed at sporting events.