DoctorEncore

On 10/14/2022 at 2:35 PM, Goodvibes said:

My collection is still in totes for many years lol!

It's a required phase of collecting that, in most cases, will continue indefinitely. I feel like no matter how much room or shelving you have, there will always be at least a few bins.

3 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Thanks Obama!

It's also sitting in my booklog

I hope I didn't mention anything too spoilery and I hope you enjoy it! It has a really good score on Good Reads so most people liked it a lot more than I did.

Here's a link to last year's topic if anyone wants to see what games/movies people were checking out in 2021: VGS Halloween 2021.

I was slacking a bit this year (and also just had another baby; three children has transformed our house from controlled chaos to absolute madness) and didn't get the topic ready in time for late September

As for me, my family already did our yearly viewing of Nightmare Before Christmas which is always fantastic. I doubt the wife and I will have time to sit down for any mature movies with our sleep schedules so messed up right now.

Regarding gaming, I don't think I'm going to get into the backlog, but I am going to check out Scorn since it's releasing on Game Pass today. It looks creepy and weird in a lot of cool ways with a lot of H.R. Giger influence.

On 10/6/2022 at 2:48 AM, Witty said:

Hey All,
I just discovered this site! I have enjoyed the discussions and have learned a lot more about NES collecting, so thanks! September marked 2 years of collecting for me. It started with a box my mom found in the attic with my original NES and 18 games. Here is my current collection.  I wish I had a better way to keep them and show them off. Sadly bins in the closet will have to do for now.

This is exactly what my collection looked like for many, many years. Bin life!

On 10/8/2022 at 8:05 AM, a3quit4s said:

He is a douche. Has been for years. Does nothing special at Tesla. Always taking credit for others work and pretending he does everything. I hope every single person cancels their Twitter account and we never hear from him again. 

This. He's not a good human, just a good salesman.

I just want to know who thought Glass Joe had the screen presence to be a leading man. Give me Hippo or give me death!

When I finished my NES set, it went from a priority to a side activity. Now I'm interested in variants and little additions to the set, but my primary goal is to just play and enjoy games in general with a focus on newer stuff. I did start a couple other sets, but not with nearly the same fervor or obsession. Collecting is a weird two-headed beast that is fun, but not fun, if that makes any sense.

I see this as a win-win since I love the game and would gladly own a physical copy, but I don't have the DLC yet. Now I get a physical copy and the DLC for a reasonable price. The rare combined gamer/collector victory.

I never got into Garbage Pail Kids, so the nostalgia isn't there for me. I'll be interested to see if the game is actually any good though.

Even cooler from my standpoint is the fully-localized Battlefields of Napoleon prototype with all the documentation and boards. I'm seriously considering getting in on that auction.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/275491251570

14 hours ago, a3quit4s said:

I thought very seriously about putting this and a black light in the nook where pinball would be. I figured the lights throughout the basement would cancel out the effect. 

Everything's looking great! You could always throw down a sweet rug and add some mood lighting to that corner so it gives you that aesthetic when the rest of the lights are off. Always good to have a nice base to start with since you can customize later.

On 7/25/2022 at 4:52 PM, G-type said:

The problem was that the appeal of the first book rested entirely on the novelty of his world-building and you can only be introduced to a cool new SF world once.. The actual writing was like middle school book report level.

Finished up a few books since my last update.

Ready Player Two was pretty terrible. As others have said, the writing is just so, so bad and the story is painfully generic. The book is also horribly paced, taking long detours into uninteresting territory on a regular basis. It was a real slog. It looks like Cline struck gold with the first novel and used up all his talent to make that one work. I won't be checking out any of his other books.

I really enjoyed Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. I like that it is so different from Blade Runner. I wish there was a little more depth to the characters and a little more time spent on the central question of what defines humanity, but it moves briskly and let's the reader do the majority of the pondering on that. I also had a love/hate relationship with the dialogue and thought processes which feel very stilted and unnatural. This robotic style definitely plays into the uncertainty that is prominent in the novel, but also makes characters unrelatable. Definitely recommended for sci-fi fans though.

I also just finished The Three Body Problem. I was quite excited to get into this series from all the positive press it's received from friends and critics, but I ended up very disappointed. As with many other sci-fi novels, the central characters are really under-developed. Their actions and motivations are so thin as to make them feel like they exist solely to advance the plot (spoiler: that is precisely why they exist). Speaking of the plot, it's also pretty feeble. There are a few interesting ideas regarding first contact, the challenges of extreme distances, religious exremism, and loyalty to family/humanity, but they are explored at only a surface level. In the end, the book devolves into 100 pages of silly B-movie action and nonsensical pseudo-science which had me rolling my eyes and praying for the final page to come soon. I've heard that the second and third book are better, so I'm going to give them a shot, but my expectations have been checked.

Wow, nostalgia is hitting me like a ton of breaks. I definitely had one of these when I was a kid.

On 10/12/2022 at 8:40 PM, Dr. Morbis said:

Amazing collection, but two things:

1 - 28 Days Later is great, but 28 Weeks Later is probably the worst "we're trying our hardest to make a good movie" movie I've ever seen in my entire life.

And 2 - how is Plan 9 a zombie movie?  Granted I haven't seen it in like 25 years, but I don't remember any zombies...

I saw 28 Days Later in the theater and it is probably my all-time favorite zombie movie. The "original" ending is super bleak and great, although I don't mind the optimistic theatrical ending. There is also a batshit crazy alternate second half that you can check out in the special features on the DVD/Blu-Ray.

I also saw 28 Weeks Later in the theaters and I thought it was quite good, although I couldn't tell you a thing about it. I'll have to give it a rewatch some time and see if I still like it.

All I know is that I'd gladly watch a 28 Months Later if they got Boyle and Garland back.

I remember playing the original way back when it was released and thinking the huge cast was a cool concept. I'd be interested to see how well they hold up although we all know I won't actually play them.

Cigarettes are clearly worse. Not sure what spurred you to make this poll, but it's not even close.

Congrats on an amazing accomplishment. Can't argue against that top 3. Gaming perfection right there.

So... when's the book coming? And what system is next?

On 9/25/2022 at 10:01 PM, Reed Rothchild said:

Yeah but old movies were also available on film back then!

Not in your home! But I get your point.

I don't watch old movies on a VCR just because that's what was available when they were released. Give me HDMI output with pixel perfect accuracy on a big ass OLED TV. Good hardware emulators are close enough in accuracy for even most hardcore gamers. I'm a huge proponent of the excellent (albeit pricey) Analogue FGPA emulators. I've also got a PolyMega on preorder for disc based games and (hopefully) N64.

6 hours ago, MegaMan52 said:

He also gave me some Unicorn Kraft Dinner. I didn't ask for it or even really wa

Downloaded the Resident Evil Village Cloud demo for Switch. I've already played it a few times and am not sure yet if I'm going to download the full version.

I was in the grocery store with my 2-year old daughter the other day and she saw this Unicorn Mac and Cheese and was quite insistent I buy it. I guess the love of unicorns transcends borders and ages.

10 minutes ago, MagusSmurf said:

Most of the fans who really liked Paper Mario and TTYD have spent the 15 years since Super Paper Mario hoping the series would get back on track and continue on in the vein of the first two games (optimally it would improve on them and be even better!) but the series never really did (to considerable disappointment and complaining) so rest assured that at the very least you're in good company with the fanbase on the matter of the later games.

@RH With all of the times people have been disappointed in Paper Mario since Super Paper Mario on Wii, the game doesn't stand out as particularly hated at this point. Back in the day by some, sure, but I think the anger has cooled. That said, it certainly wasn't what people wanted regardless.

It has maybe the best and funniest dialogue among the first three games (presumably the entire series; I was scared off from playing later games when I saw the reaction to Sticker Star). But it scrapped the established Mario JRPG "timed hits" battles for a sidescroller action-adventure world and combat which is functional but just doesn't have much "oomph" to it. They have some creative sections and ideas and the game sorta works as an "experience." MAYBE it could be said to have decent boss fights (I haven't touched it since back in the day). But overall it just doesn't really work as an action game. It kind of leaves the question of "well if you guys weren't going to be that serious with the new combat, what was so wrong with the old combat?"

And while most of the game is 2D, Mario has the ability to "flip" the level from 2D into 3D and it's a neat idea. The 3D world isn't great though, it generally has to correspond to the 2D level so it's stuck with pretty straightforward layouts and is kinda dull-looking and I recall it's main function generally being to have hidden stuff that's not there in the 2D world or allow you to go around 2D obstacles. Your access to the 3rd dimension also depletes a meter that I recall being annoyingly slow to recharge but I might just been annoyed that the meter existed at all when they should have just given you free access from the beginning (I think there might have been something postgame that allows this? I forget).

If they had gone with any of old-style Paper Mario combat, focused on making it a legitimately good action game (maybe with more influence from a long-lasting sidescrolling series like, I dunno, THE MARIO FRANCHISE), or went really hard after the 2D/3D gimmick to the exclusion of everything else (because you'd probably have to for it to really shine), it probably would have been a better game. As is, it's kind of stuck as a decent-to-good oddity whose failure to really nail down its gameplay makes it hard to recommend to any particular audience other than Paper Mario fans craving more of the first two games' sense of humor and vibe.

I read an interview with the director of the franchise and he said they will only make new Paper Mario games if they have an interesting or creative idea for a new battle system. This sounds great in theory, but reinventing the wheel is impossibly hard because the wheel is already perfect. The goal is innovation, but instead we get a new painful, gimmicky combat system every game. Sometimes iteration is okay! It's a damn shame too because everything outside of the combat in Origami King is fantastic. Change simply for the sake of change is one of Nintendo's longest running and most detestable policies.

I don't know if this was the specific interview I am remembering, but he says essentially the same thing here. He specifically notes that he doesn't want to just give people what they want. Ugh.

 https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2020/08/paper_mario_producer_says_hes_not_opposed_to_the_fans_opinions

It seems everyone is always heaping praise on this game and I'd like to play it, but it's way down my backlog list at this point.

Outside of Super Mario RPG, the only Paper Mario games I've played are Origami King and Sticker Star, both of which were extremely disappointing.

9 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

I'm sold @DoctorEncore.  Next times it's $20 or less on PS5, I'm jumping on it.

Usually I find indie games to be overhyped and their review scores laughably inflated (I'm looking at you Stray), but I enjoyed almost every second of this one. I think it is a great example of proper project scoping and management. It sticks to what its good at (with the exception of a couple sequences towards the end) and executes almost flawlessly. I don't think everyone will enjoy it as much as I did, but I love it when games punch above their weight and absolutely stick the landing. It really did remind me of Hellblade in so many ways. In a world of endless open world checklists, there is something to be said for a tightly crafted adventure. Amazingly, I'll probably be getting sequels to both of these games within the next 12 months. It's a great time to be a gamer.

A Plague Tale: Innocence - Xbox Series X
Score: 9/10

A Plague Tale is hands-down one of my favorite games that I have played this year. Its unique setting, interesting characters, enjoyable gameplay, and beautiful graphics place it heads and shoulders above most AA games. The closest comparison I can come up with is Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, another absolutely stellar game from a smaller studio that checks many of the same boxes.

The game follows Amecia and her younger brother Hugo as they flee the Inquisition in 14th century France. Their escape is set against a virulent plague which is ravaging the land and somehow sending rats into a supernatural frenzy, all of which seems to be related to young Hugo. The setting really helps the game stand out from the crowd and was a big factor in my enjoyment. It also makes for some beautiful environments and impressive set pieces. The characters are amazingly detailed and the shift from a verdant green summer to a hellish, rat-infested nightmare is powerful.

The game could best be described as a stealth adventure with light action elements. Gameplay can be a bit simplistic, but as Amecia learns more recipes and her abilities improve, things open up nicely. The game is at its best when it lets you creatively use the environment and weapons to lure enemies to their grisly death by rodent. There is also a bit of puzzle solving and exploration which are appropriately simple and keep the game moving at a nice pace. My only complaint comes towards the end when the developers opted for a few more action-oriented encounters which just don't work. They add unneeded frustration to the game and actually slow things down due to the relatively strict fail states. I personally enjoyed the limited boss encounters, even with their heavier focus on action, although your mileage may vary.

A Plague Tale: Innocence is a phenomenal experience that I would highly recommend to all players. The story and setting do a lot to lift the total package above the more standard gameplay elements, but I found enjoyment in pretty much every aspect of the game. This is easily one of my favorite games of the last generation and one of the best AA games around.

As for the rest of the backlog, no big changes. Still plugging away at FFX which is enjoyable (outside of Blitzball... ugh) and a few co-op Switch games with my son. Now that Deathloop is out on XSX, I'll probably give that a go after I finish Guardians of the Galaxy.

On 9/13/2022 at 3:17 PM, avatar! said:

I got to the very end of A Plague Tale and it ruined it for me. By the time you get to the last chapter or two, I found it repetitive, and boring. I know games are meant to get more challenging towards the end, but one little mistake and you're back to the starting. Also, as much as I loved the environment and story at the start, by the end of the game I was really not invested in any of the characters. Just my opinion of course, but I'd be curious to hear your thoughts after completing the game.

I'll have more to say in the Backlog thread, but I 100% get what you're saying. The last couple stages really do the game a disservice by adding way too much action into what is essentially a stealth game. It didn't ruin the game for me, but it is a real shame they couldn't tighten up the ending. Overall, I still really, really enjoyed the game.