ZeldaFreak

Plus, Hans Zimmer. Always makes any movie better. Easily up there with the likes of John Williams as one of the best film composers of all time IMO.

Yeah, that's the draw of the whole series is the charm, witty dialogue, and good characters. IMO the whole series has that in spades, it's not like it's exclusive to the first one. It's just that as they go on, the action set pieces also get bigger, and the plot gets more complex. Well-written dialogue and action aren't mutually exclusive. Davy Jones is an amazingly written antagonist and an amazing character, and the 2nd film in general has a pretty intricate web of competing motivations for all of the main characters, which is a large part of why it's my personal favorite of the series. Every character feels like they're there for a reason, have their own individual goals they're trying to accomplish, and those goals directly clash with another character's goals, which makes it almost feel like it's every man for themselves. Very fitting for a pirate-themed movie now that I think about it, actually. And (at least to me) it doesn't feel contrived in any way, everyone's motivations make perfect sense, which makes it very engaging to me. And... the thing with Jack is that he has this facade of a bumbling idiot, when in actuality he's constantly scheming and planning under the surface, that facade he puts up is just to distract people from that fact. A common complaint I hear with the sequels is that people feel as though as the series progresses, he feels more and more like he actually is just a bumbling, lucky idiot and he looses the scheming side of him, but I've always disagreed with that. I think the facade he puts on just gets gradually more and more convincing, and the scheming side gets more and more subtle. It's honestly pretty obvious and not all that secret that he's a conniving little shithead in the first one, whereas he's not quite as overt about it in the future movies. That's actually why Jack in the 4th film is probably my favorite version of him. He comes across as a complete imbecile at first glance, but that movie almost more than any of the others, he's constantly outsmarting and outscheming everyone. Similar to how he is in the 1st film, but a bit more subtle about it which I personally prefer. Anyway, yeah it's probably pretty obvious that I love this series (other than the 5th.) I'd personally put it up there with the likes of Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, Lord of the Rings, etc in terms of some of the best film series IMO.

Yeah, that's what most people think, but I've always disagreed. I actually prefer the 2nd and 4th films over the 1st, which THAT I know is an insanely controversial opinion. 5th one kinda blows though, that's the only one of the whole series I'm not a big fan of. At least it has a good villain.

They definitely have. Depending on how much focus the developers and writers want to place on the story, video game stories can be more in depth and lengthy than entire TV shows or novels these days, let alone individual movies.

Good question. The Last of Us is an easy mention. Detroit: Become Human I also enjoyed a lot, though people's opinions on David Cage games can vary somewhat. I personally like them for the most part. Plus, in regards to Detroit, it was nice to finally have a protagonist with the same name as me, haha. I also personally really enjoyed the storyline in the newer DOOM games, even though that's not the focus. Always enjoyed reading through all the codex entries in DOOM Eternal and whatnot. Other than that, let's see... The Binding of Isaac has an interesting, albeit very sad story. GTA IV and V both have excellent, very engaging stories IMO, but especially V. Skyrim's story I also always enjoyed, though I haven't played it in a long while. One of my favorite games, Payday 2, has a fucking batshit insane story which is entertaining in its own way, haha. Firewatch is another great one, albeit a bit short. Portal 2 is also pretty great. Undertale and Deltarune, both excellent IMO. The Half-Life series always had great stories, especially Half-Life 2 and it's episodes. Shadow of the Colossus is fairly light on story, but what is there is great. Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag I always thought had a surprisingly engaging story for an AC game. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is another really good one actually, if you're looking for more of an immersive, individual character study. I personally enjoyed the story of Owlboy quite a bit, though that may be in part due to the fact that I could strongly relate to the main character. Subnautica's story and worldbuilding I always found very interesting, both the original and Below Zero. Stardew Valley actually has a pretty good story, in regards to having a lot of very well fleshed out characters you can interact with at will and at your own pace. I could probably think of some more, but those are all the ones that come to mind for me personally. Little something for everyone in that list I think, all different genres and differing amounts of focus being placed on the story, some being explicitly story-driven and some barely having any story at all, though the little that is there is good. I know there's some like Red Dead Redemption or some of the Telltale games which I've heard have excellent stories, but don't spring to mind for me since I haven't personally played them.

Easy 9. What I'd be curious about is to see people's thoughts on the sequels. I'm of the (seemingly) rare opinion that the first 4 films are all of a pretty similar caliber, even the 4th one which people largely hate for... reasons I've never quite been clear on.

I'm thinking this year I'm gonna focus on NES, then in 2025 I'll circle back around to Gameboy. Good luck to everyone this year though! If you guys make a crazy amount of quick progress in a few months time I may refocus my attention to this instead, but we'll see!

Personally I'm satisfied with what we accomplished last year so I won't be partaking in this one, but good luck to those who are!

Depending on whether or not there's any other completion threads for this year, I'm gonna try to lend some aid this time around. I'm gonna prioritize games which weren't beaten last year, and games which are generally unfun and/or very long, same as I did with the N64 completion thread last year. I'm gonna try to focus on the games that nobody really wants to play, and hopefully save the fun ones for the rest of you. We made a big push in the N64 completion thread last year and managed to beat the whole library, let's try to make a big push for NES this year and I'm sure we can replicate that same success.

Gotcha, was just confused about that. Makes sense

Oh yeah I'll take that too if that's a thing

Well yeah that's what I meant, a huge list of fixes, haha. Another thing I just noticed with the badges is that some of them say "(Badge Name) for a post in a topic" rather than just the name of the badge, and if you click on it, it takes you to the post in which the badge was awarded. The Helping Hand badge I have is the same way. Given the way the system works I understand why that would happen, not really an issue in and of itself, I'm just not sure why that would only happen to a couple of the badges and not all of them.

Oh, should I go ahead and inundate you with things to fix with dark mode again in that case?

Kiosk Badge (Pic below, forgot about this one. I think I did take a pic of one of my kiosks in the past, but I have no clue where that pic is now so I just took another one.) Also, is there any way to choose which badges you want to be displayed under your profile? As far as I can tell there isn't, that's really the only improvement to the current system I can think of. Other than that we're pretty much back to where we were at with the previous system which happened a lot quicker than I was expecting given how barebones the new system was at first. Well done @Gloves I also noticed earlier that the Holiday contest badges I have are slightly smaller than the other badges for whatever reason in the Badges section of my profile, not a big deal at all but figured I'd point it out. Not sure if any other badges have that issue or if it's just these 4.

1: It was this year, but I think it's being discussed to not make that one annual anymore since turnout for that one was very low this year. 2: Nah I'm a completionist by goal is to WIN, haha

I actually kinda like this idea

Yeah, his video on PGA helped me a good bit. Anyway, now I can finally get back to playing DOOM Next year I'm probably gonna focus my efforts on the NES Completion thread, unless there's another timed library besides that one, in which case I'll focus my efforts on that.

And with that, the N64 library has been conquered @Splain

Oh OK, I didn't realize you had already done it, nice. We'll be fully done later tonight then.

Will 100% be done with PGA later tonight, so as long as @the_wizard_666's got Wrestlemania taken care of, we're aaaaall good.

Alrighty! SO, with scores of 19,743,710, 10,187,430 & 7,311,710 respectively, @ndsnfr has won in 1st place, @SuperJimtendo has won in 2nd place, @NESfiend has won in 3rd place, and (after a little change of heart) @The Grinch has taken care of selecting the winner of the 8-bit Xmas 2023 cart, which will go to @ndsnfr with a score of 19,743,710 over The Grinch's final score of 6,220,090! Congrats, you all did super well! As always, thank you all for participating! @ndsnfr@SuperJimtendo@NESfiend@CT@Link@RH@Gloves@DefaultGen@ZeldaFan042@multiboot@BlackVega@spacepup@JamesRobot@Splain That about does it! With all that said and done, the 2023 VGS Christmas Contest has come to a close! Merry Christmas (and a Happy New Year) to you all! I hope you all had a good time with this one, this event was a huge success which I was very very happy to see! Hope to see you all again next event!

That's fair, I do agree with that.

It's not that bad, it's just kinda boring, haha.

oremoR nhoJ ,em llik tsum uoy ,emag eht niw oT