Davedevil

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Posts posted by Davedevil

  1. Trying to think of games that either aren't on PS4 or would be better on a handheld.

    If you take interest in Hades, I'd heartily recommend Supergiant's other games: Bastion, Transistor, Pyre. They're all the same kind of game in that they're 2d isometric action games, but they're vastly different with style: the first is closer to classic Zelda, second is nouveau art cyberpunk and the third is high fantasy basketball.

    There's the Nintendo Switch Online service, which comes with S/NES games, along with Genesis/N64 if you get the expansion. It's $20/year for the basic and $50 for the latter.

  2. Liked it overall. Jamie Magnus Stone's work on Spyfall Part 1 is probably the best directing of that season, and he brought that same energy here. Effects were really beautiful, that shot of the Doctor's eye transitioning to the Flux was a standout.

    The kitchen sink approach is something. I think they could've taken at least one subplot out, but considering how short a season we have and how many different strands they want to touch on, I guess they have to have all that.

    Spoiler

    I would probably say the Sontaran and/or the 1820 plotlines, but those seem to be relevant next week so, might as well have them here. (Also, really nice to hear Dan Starkey as a Sontaran again)

    I'm still crossing my arms at all the Division stuff, but we'll see what they plan to do.

    Some of the stuff felt really familiar, a furry warrior who has a bond to a human? Hmm. The fact that Karvanista (which honestly sounds more like a species name or title than a person) attempted a mind trick made me laugh. Azure being an ancient entity in the form of a normal woman also gave me flashbacks to Suicide Squad 2016.

    Dan is a pretty good addition, although at this point you can pretty much sum him up with "he's nice".

    Yaz works really well now that she has more space, though I really would have liked to have seen those prior adventures, like in an Easter special or whatever (I'm sure Big Finish are just hearing the cash register sounds). Intrigued by Claire, and Karvanista is kinda fun.

  3. Still surreal to me. It's felt like people left because they ran out of things to do with the show, but I'm sure RTD's HBO work has reinvigorated him. I'm curious to see what he does now that Moffat (in my opinion) has raised the game with what the show can do, and how Chibnall has stagnated it. This is probably the most exciting thing they've done since Whittaker's casting, which says something about how it's been lately.

    Really curious to see what the co-production aspect means for it going forward. From everything I've been reading in About Time, Julie Gardner is owed a lot of credit when it comes to actually making the revival work.

  4. I'm sure everybody's saying this, but I wish showrunners didn't leave with their Doctors. I would really like to see Whittaker with a different team. I just hope that what they leave off with is fresh and exciting.

    S11 Thirteen was a very friendly, oftentimes funny tour guide. She had her distinctly quirky moments like her squeal when she saw the Kerblam Man, or when she reformatted Ryan's phone for her own uses, but they were few and far between.  She was enjoyable, but not distinctly exciting.  S12 swung a bit too far in the opposite direction, the Doctor using someone's skin color against them in a fight just feels wrong. And then she's just moody for the rest of the season, which isn't very fun to watch.

  5. Finished AC Odyssey, the story was mostly really enjoyable. Definitely too burnt out to do the DLC just yet, but that's typically how AC games go for me,

     

    Rebel Galaxy Outlaw: I've never been one to play pilot simulator games, but this looked like it had enough player choice to interest me, plus I really enjoyed the space flight segments in Kingdom Hearts 3. Having a blast with this, especially now that I've got a handle on the flying and the in-game economy. Small indie games are a great counterbalance to sprawling AAA games.

  6. Pocket Casts does that, yes. 

    And if you want to bookmark timestamps, Podcast Addict is good for that. I don't think it logs the MP3 into the player the way Pocket Casts does, however, so you'll have to find the file on your phone if you want to listen to it again.

  7. The Winter Soldier storyline from Brubaker and Epting had the 50s Cap revived by the Red Skull. Apparently he was revived prior to that in the 70s, turned into a Neo Nazi leader named the Grand Director by Doctor Faustus. I guess there are running motifs throughout the history of Captain America.

  8. Assassin's Creed Odyssey: AC goes full MMO design. There's too much procedurally generated in this game. Daily refreshing challenges, quests that are too similar to one another, a map that's simply too big. The mercenary system, where you have mini-bosses tracking you based on your notoriety, walks the line between fun random encounters to groaning as you enter a city to realize there are 5 different mercs coming for you at the same time.

    The story, which I doubt I'm more than halfway through, is actually really interesting, plus the gameplay is really fun and over-the-top. I love the gear that you get a ton of, they're really well-designed. The humor is excellent.

    When it's stuff that's personally crafted, like you hunting bears for their testicles to make an aphrodisiac for an old man, it's really fun. When you do the same for a dozen generic NPCs just for the EXP and money, not as much.

  9. Mortal Kombat (2021) - I'm a big fan of the recent games and this matched the style and tone of those pretty well. I don't think the new guy was really necessary, he could've been any of the existing characters. I find it weird that the movie not made in the 90s is the one that has the blank slate original protagonist, I find that more appropriate for something aimed at all-ages audiences. The changes to the lore tying everyone together bother me a bit, because MK's appeal is how it takes so many disparate genres and melds them together in a fun mish-mash. The length also bothers me, it feels like a pilot for a show. If it isn't successful enough for a sequel, I would much prefer a series to really cover the whole world of the games.

    Caveats aside, I did enjoy what was here. The cast nail their characters; Kano surprisingly steals the show, Scorpion and Sub-Zero are amazing, the Shaolin Monks are a lot of fun. The action was decent, could've been edited better, but I'm glad to see fatalities done in a movie. Any fight Scorpion's in, I'm all for.

    Overall, fun experience, has some pretty big flaws, I'm really curious if they'll make more.

  10. Zack Snyder's Justice League: I don't get what made this supposedly "unwatchable". I watched this in two sittings and it flowed; I'm sure the inevitable 3 hour or less version that would have come out would've been even snappier. While three character introductions is still a bit unwieldy for a team-up movie, I can't think of much material that I would prefer to be gone.

    Like everyone else said, it had the parts I already enjoyed from the original, and more. I still think Miller's take on Barry is, strange but his arc was convincing enough. Aquaman was the opposite, where I liked him on-screen but he seemed to just drop in and out. Cyborg was great, Fisher was right to be mad about what they did to his character.

    The climax was pretty damn spectacular. I can't think of many others that were as effective (definitely not WW84, much as I actually like that movie). And the Flash's scene...whoa. The funny thing is being reminded that the idea is pretty much right out of the Reeve Superman films.

    But while I'm glad to be able to watch this now, I don't think I would've traded what happened for this and the probably sequels it would've spawned at the time. I think DC's on a good trajectory right now with its standalone films, and I'm not sure if they would've happened they way they did otherwise.

  11. TV: One of my friends convinced me and another friend to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation and Battlestar Galactica with her, then it expanded to include Star Trek TOS. I never thought I'd be into Star Trek, but about here I am about 200 episodes later (I also added Enterprise to watch by myself). Having Dan and Mike doing a podcast that covers two of those things is a good motivator for that too.

    Speaking of things Mike and Dan cover, I realized this past month that I missed Doctor Who. Thanks to HBO Max, I rewatched the Capaldi era up to where I stopped, a couple episodes into s10, and finally saw what was beyond that. It's not a perfect era but I adore it for taking some big risks for the show. I just started Whittaker's second season and it's pretty decent. I enjoy the cast more than the stories, but the eye candy thanks to the seemingly bigger budget per episode is enough to get me through.

    In addition to this, I subscribed to BritBox, so that's Classic Who covered, mostly Hartnell and Pertwee for now.

    Reading: Comics and books weren't holding my attention quite so much already, quarantine pretty much killed that outside of reading for grad school.

    Video games: I still play Apex Legends and Mortal Kombat 11 as I used to prior to quarantine, with the occasional PS+ free game like the BioShock collection. 

    I got really into Dragon Age while waiting for new RPGs to come out. I dug DA II a lot (flaws and all), and Inquisition is a blast. Those games are different from Mass Effect in that it feels like you're the DM for a whole universe, by virtue of switching up the cast every installment but keeping past characters around.

    Podcasts: My listening rate has actually gone up as far as podcasts. Mortal Podkast and Retronauts are two of the ones I'd recommend most highly. The former's an entertaining look at the MK universe through the lens of a character at a time, the latter is a retro games show that digs into other topics too (their Doctor Who episode was what sparked me getting back into the show).

  12. Definitely agree on WW84. I can see why people wouldn't like it on a style level, and some of the political things people have brought up are definitely valid, but I had a blast watching this. The running time barely felt noticeable to me, and I just went with the dream logic of the whole thing. Sure, there's some times I wish they sped it up, but I just went with it. Along with the obvious like Spider-Verse, this felt a lot like a comic to me, though I can't quite describe why.

  13. Been meaning to listen to that. 

    Related to that, I've been listening to Previously on X-Men, where they alternate between covering a comic, a movie, an episode of the 90s cartoon and a character's history each week. 

    Radioactive Spider-Pod is also a fun show, where they cover the 90s animated series episode by episode with an older and comedic eye. Nice to hear appreciation for a show that I've always loved.