TwinIon

Some info that probably isn't new, but is new to me was just how expensive She-Hulk was. I enjoyed the show, but it should not have cost $25M an episode. I am glad to hear that Marvel execs are aware of just how bad some of the effects in Quantumanina were. I hadn't been aware of all the Blade drama (lol at the idea of a Blade film where Blade is the fourth lead), but a $100M movie written by Micheal Green (Logan, Blade Runner 2049) gives me hope. Overall, I think the biggest issue that Marvel had is that they had built up so much machinery to get them to End Game and they couldn't spin it back down again. They had to keep making more and more, but they'd lost so many of the pillars their early success was built on. I understand why Disney couldn't even imagine doing it, but I think the best move for the long term success of the brand post Endgame would have been to dramatically slow the flow of new content. We've seen time and time again how even a few years between entries can make fans excited again, regardless of the form that new thing takes. Marvel was drowning viewers in content when it should have been starving them of it. Spend more time thinking about the next major arcs they want to cover, more time developing the shows and films they want to make. It's crazy to me that Kang was decided as a major direction after he was revealed in Loki. It does seem like they are at least aware of their problems, and even as supremely mediocre as some of their output has been, they've yet to reach Snyderverse levels of problems. Feige is still there. They've got X-Men and Fantastic Four back. I think there is still a road to recovery, but they can't rush it. If they keep up a breakneck release pace and continue to burn audiences with middling releases, bringing back OG Avengers isn't going to save them. On the other hand, if they can rebuild that hype cycle, they could use those resurrections to ride another wave.

Definitely one of the best bits they've done on SNL in a while. "You asked about the temperature?"

As someone who played a whole lot of Destiny 2 the last couple years, it doesn't surprise me at all that Bungie leadership has dug them into a giant hole. I still think the core of the game is good, and they've done some good stuff with it at times, but I think they've long suffered from a failure of leadership and direction. In order to keep content flowing at a good pace, they commoditized their seasons, making all content follow a very predictable samey pattern that could be pushed out over and over again. While I think the amount of new stuff they put out is praiseworthy, they've got so much focus on pushing out that stuff that they hardly ever get around to fixing or improving the more important things. I think the staff has done a very commendable job at churning out stuff, but IMO those efforts were too often pointed in the wrong direction. I think that was exacerbated by the existence of Marathon, which seemed to have siphoned off basically the entire team dedicated to the PvP and PvPvE sides of the game.

Johnson's first legislative decision seems to be a blunder, to the surprise of no one. Biden asked for $106B for Israel, Ukraine, immigration, and humanitarian aid. Johnson's counter offer is $14B for Israel along with cuts to the IRS. He didn't even bother to keep the funding for immigration. It's unclear if he even has sufficient House GOP support to get this passed. It would be extra hilarious if he doesn't.

Those numbers didn't feel right to me, so I at least looked up Sony's and Microsoft's and the graph is very wrong. Here is Sony's most recent quarterly report. It looks to me like that Sony number is the Consolidated total, not the Games & Network Services segment. Sony's G&NS Segment generated 771,880 million yen (~$5B as of today) in revenue [F-8], and had an operating income of 49,160 million yen (~$324k) [F-9]. That actually works out to a slightly worse margin of only 6.4%. I'm not really sure what the current Xbox numbers are, but I'm sure the graph is wrong again. Here is MS's Q1 2023 page. The "More Personal Computing" segment made $13B in revenue, but that includes Windows licensing, Search, and MS's devices division (Surface, etc). That whole division had an operating income of $4.2B, for a healthy margin of 31.6%, but they don't untangle those numbers anymore, and my bet is that Xbox has a lower margin than Windows. These were the only tidbits I could find on Xbox specifically: The graph lists the FTC vs MSFT case as a source, and they got the numbers wrong even from that. Here's a link to that disclosure, which lists the $13B in revenue as Q1-3, as in three total quarters of revenue, not just Q1. Also, that was for 2022, not 2023. At least the margin number is correct. That same link does bring up that Sony runs their gaming at a lower margin than MS does, even with double the install base, so we can base conversations on those margin differences, but the absolute numbers are way off.

I love the first one but never got around to the second given its general reception. Neither of the first two made much money, I'm surprised they'd bother going back to the well. Maybe they're hoping that Yellowstone has sufficiently boosted Taylor Sheridan's profile so as to make a third? Get Villeneuve and Deakins back and I'll be excited.

Good vid from DF. I'm glad that there is at least some hope that CPU performance will be better. It's not much of a surprise that things like shader compilation studder will stay with us for the UE5 generation. I'm looking forward to playing UE5 games as they really do look amazing at their best.

Technically I think they're both great on the PS5, without too much daylight between them. It's been a while, but I think Part 1 has some better tech in it, but Part 2 just has bigger moments that are more visually impressive, so it's kind of a wash. As games I'll take Part 2. Everything about it hits harder and is more daring, while the gameplay is more refined. They're the best games at what they do.

Do we expect Amazon to release it everywhere else anytime soon?

Getting back to the original article, I might actually prefer rebooting the Skywalker saga if the alternative is to keep remaking the same movie and calling it a sequel. Still, I don't think we'll actually see that happen. I think the only real chance of that happening was when Disney first bought the property. Now they've built up too much content around it to wipe it all away again. The last thing they need is to deal with a DCEU situation. Who is going to re-design the Millennium Falcon when they have giant physical versions in theme parks?

It's incredible that they screwed up the obvious solution so badly that they're going to end up lowering their potential future revenue share by 37.5%, and that's before you consider the loss of potential revenue from devs that avoid Unity because of this whole fiasco. Hard to recall a more impressive self destruction.

Finished the game, just have a few small things left. Overall this has been one of my favorite gaming experiences in a while. It's easy to wish for more since the first game was a bit longer, but this one is such a complete experience it's hard to be too upset with the package here. The story is fun and well told, with real stakes and big comic book swings. The combat is fun and constantly evolving. The world is huge and so much fun to get around. There are plenty of side experiences both substantial and bite sized. All of it flows together so well and is just such a joy to play. My only real complaints are the few bugs I experienced and the overly simple puzzle mini-games. I had a couple hard crashes, a couple more times I had to restart from the last checkpoint, and a few spots where I got stuck in geometry, but nothing that set me back more than a few minutes. I think the mini-game science puzzles are a good distraction and don't overstay their welcome, but they're still a bit too simple for my taste. I think most years this is probably my personal GOTY, but 2023 has been stacked and I haven't even tried BG3 yet. This is probably my favorite PS5 game to date and is right up there competing with the best Playstation has to offer. On to Alan Wake.

I agree. I also just think he only makes half a point and frames that half poorly. He repeats multiple times that "you don't want open world games, you just want the freedom you think they provide," but he fails to prove that in any meaningful way. He argues that open world games can give you too much choice, which I suppose is true enough, but that isn't intractable or inherent to the form. He shows that that even open world games can still restrict your choices in displeasing ways, which again is true enough, but it's also the status quo, so again, not necessarily a reason why we shouldn't want an open world game. Then he goes through some ways that open world games can best handle player choice while still nudging players in the "right" direction, which I don't disagree with, but again, isn't an argument for not wanting open world games. If anything, it's an argument in favor of well made open worlds. Open world games do provide more choice in a lot of important ways that players can appreciate and I think can make games genuinely better. If there's one thing this thread proves it's that it is difficult to add meaningful side content in a way that is actually additive to the overall player experience.

I've been praising it in it's on thread, but I think Spider-Man 2 handles side quests very well. Side quests are mostly discovered as you traverse the map, and they aren't all pushed at the same time, with different quests becoming available as you progress through the game. There is a good variety in what the quests entail, Some of them unexpectedly turn into longer quest lines that end up tying into the main narrative, others operate more or less on their own. The main story itself has built in breaks for side quests, giving you time to "just be Spider-Man." In what could be argued to be a downgrade, the biggest encounters in side quests are much smaller than they were in the first game, but that reduction in size keeps the pace of the game moving along, ensuring they don't overstay their welcome. While side quests of a certain type usually end up being fairly similar, they still generally spice things up a bit, adding new wrinkles to quests in different locations or changing them as the main story progresses. Overall it's some of the best handling of side quests in open world games to date. Not all of them are memorable or great fun, but even the simple distractions are a fine change of pace and short enough not to be annoying.

I definitely played some of the original game but did not finish it, nor do I remember it very well. The Remaster is $10 right now and I'm considering picking it up. Any thoughts on how well the first game holds up?

I remember that being a common sentiment at the time, but I just couldn't bring myself to play another MGS game after 2. I could appreciate the stealth gameplay and the clear care that went into the game, but I found the storytelling to be insufferable. The only MGS game I've played since is V, which I really enjoyed largely because the story took such a back seat to the gameplay.

I'm closing in on the end of the game and I just keep coming back to how amazingly paced this game is. It's a constant flow of new abilities, enemies, and twists in the story. Even the content that you've been doing the whole time, like the random crimes, evolve as the story goes along. The first game did this all pretty well, but I think they've really fine tuned it with this second entry. I think this game is better paced and more fluid than most non-open world games. I love the recent God of War titles, but I think this one does better than those even with a much more open world. I think it's right up there with games like Uncharted and The Last of Us in how well it keeps things moving, but it's more impressive given all the balls it keeps in the air.

I didn't find that trailer nearly as impressive as most other UE5 reels, which isn't to say it doesn't look good. I never got around to Snake Eater, as I was never the biggest fan of the series, but maybe I'll give the remaster a try.

Reading through the complaint now, and the part that stands out to me is are the allegations that Meta broke the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). That should be a fairly straightforward case to make that is clearly violating a specific standard. Sure, there are nuances there with opt-in vs opt out, the amount of effort they're obligated to put into obtaining records and how exactly the data collected is used, but it's law that outlines what they should be doing and if Meta didn't handle all that correctly, these Attorney's General should be able to show that. The rest of the complaint is far from straightforward and seems like a difficult case for government to make. I'm sure that they'll be able to show that Meta built their business to maximize attention, but going on to show that Meta specifically developed harmful features that they knew were dangerous is a higher bar to clear. Some of the features they're specifically going after are Likes, notifications, and infinite scrolling. Those aren't so much unique harms that Meta employs as they are fundamentals of social media. There will be a lot about what Meta knows and when they knew it, but while whistleblowers have long since leaked some of the worse bits of their internal research, Meta has been putting out tons of other research to the contrary for years. It's easy to imagine Zuck on the stand saying that when he gets 1 data point in direction A and 5 points in direction B, he's more inclined to believe B. I'm sure there's plenty more in there that I might get around to, but I had to laugh at when they argue that Meta is "expanding the use of these new practices into new Platforms and domains. This includes, for example, Meta's Virtual Reality Metaverse, where young users are immersed into Meta's new Horizon Worlds platform;" I don't doubt that Meta is doing whatever they can to keep people using Horizon Worlds, but it's famously a flop that they've recently lowered their already low expectations on. Bringing up Horizon Worlds is like bringing up the Wii U when you're trying to show how successful Nintendo had been with the Wii.

I was thinking about that alternate reality where this story focuses on the federal agent that comes in to save the day and how difficult it would to keep that perspective from becoming a white savior story. Whatever criticisms one might have of the final product, I feel pretty strongly that it's not that.

I'm really loving this one so far. The action is awesome and the storytelling continues to be top notch. I really enjoy the combat and how everything is additive. I'm never sacrificing one ability to have another, it's always just adding more and more to my arsenal. If anythings, there are almost too many things, and I can sometimes get a bit lost in everything I have access to. The pacing of the game is really a tier above every other open world title and it's because of how well every aspect of the game gells together. There are main story missions with small story moments or enormous set pieces. There's a huge variety of side quests around the city that feel much more organic than in most open worlds, largely only popping up after you've gotten to a certain point and have explored the right part of the city. The variety there really is key, with some being very low stakes mini-games and others involving significant combat encounters. It's great that if you encounter a mission or side quest that requires a specific spider-man that you don't need to manually switch, just start the thing and the switch happens instantly. Then there's the traversal, which itself is effectively a mini-game to enjoy between everything else. I'd recommend turning the swing assist way down in the settings (I have it on 0). It doesn't make swinging much more difficult, but it does make it more rewarding. It's much easier to end up in the side of a building or just without enough height, and it makes those perfect combos of swings and glides feel better when properly executed. The wings are a lot of fun and really round out the experience of traveling around the city. I kind of wish the wind tunnels were a bit less obvious and maybe something discovered instead of being giant targets in the hud, but the actual experience of flying around the city is great. I'm constantly switching between flight and swinging and I'm having a great time. Even the fast travel really sells the whole pace of the game. It's so fast and fluid and you can select anywhere in a district you've unlocked, so if you do want to finish a story section right away and don't want to swing across the city, it's a great option to have. I've only used it a couple times, but man is it slick. The graphics are some of the best on the system, but there are occasional moments where things look very unimpressive. There have been a few times when things have been isolated and there just isn't much going on and it highlights some lower quality assets. Most of the time, there is so much happening that it's hard to appreciate exactly how good everything does look. I've also had a couple crashes, which is unusual for Insomniac, but thankfully none of them have set me back more than a minute or two. The Spider-man games have already been some of my favorite open worlds, and this third installment raises the bar in every way. Nearly every interaction has something extra to it that feels unnecessary, but still ads to the whole experience.

Saw it this weekend and it's another high quality Scorsese pic, though I wouldn't rate it among his best work. I do think this is the best that De Niro has been in a long time, and DiCaprio gives a performance up with his best ever. (I do have to mention that while Leo does have a babyface, can we stop pretending that he looks like a young kid if you just give him the right haircut? His age is never really important, so it's a minor quibble, but he's not in his 20s anymore.)

I agree with what you're saying, but it's not like this is my first AC game. I've played every AC game through to completion other than Valhalla. I got far enough that I had met Basim, but not far enough to have revealed the twist that this game's ending is predicated on. I also think this could have been a great way to try and introduce new people to the series. A smaller game that utilizes the core mechanics and goes back to the same setting as the original game could have been a great intro. As with all the other issues with Mirage, it basically speaks to them needing to move farther away from this being a DLC and more towards it being a worthwhile stand-alone game.

It's a real thing in that lots of people misremember things in a similar way. I don't think it's especially revelatory. It makes complete sense to me that if one person remembers something slightly wrong and communicates that to someone with vaguely similar experiences that the second person might accept that misremembered thing as truth. Especially for things like public figures and media that we all experience at arms length through TV or newspapers, it's not hard to imagine why lots of people get things wrong in the same way, even independently. I think it's similar to why people get so freaked out by targeted advertising and assume their phone is spying on them. How could the first google suggestion be for this random thing I was just thinking about? How could Facebook send me this ad for this service that I was just talking about? Because people are generally predictable and not the wholly unique special flowers that we think we are. That and we're noticing outliers and ignoring that Facebook showed you 200 ads that you completely ignored because they were not relevant.

When they decided that it wasn't going to be DLC, and when they sold it at $50, I think so. I'm sure you're right. If this had been cut down even more and was a $30 "Assassin's Creed Valhalla - Basim's Mirage" or something, I'd be inclined to think of it differently, but it's not. I suppose you can argue about different tiers of AC games, but to my mind there are mainline games that got full console releases, and then there are the various smaller spin-off games. Wikipedia organizes it that way. Still, even if you compare this game the other second tier games like Rouge or Syndicate, I think Mirage is the least of them, given when it was released and what it accomplishes.