TwinIon

I think my favorite game of the year was Forbidden West. As a sequel, it really expanded upon nearly everything that they needed to, while taking some great strides in other areas (like fully directed dialog sequences). It's a wonderful open world game, with great combat and a great story and was just a joy to play. Ragnarok is a close second, and could easily be first depending on what day you ask me. Both games are so well polished and such great overall packages that I'll happily replay both before their next installments. Destiny 2 continued to take up most of my time, and I think the year of the Witch Queen has been very good for the game. I think the seasonal model they have now needs to be shaken up a bit, and hopefully Lightfall fixes things, but overall I think the game has been as good as ever. The moment to moment gunplay is still top notch, and I've had a ton of fun with the new builds this year. I do think my playtime will dip a lot in the next season unless they do something unexpected Elden Ring certainly deserves a special mention, as it's an incredible achievement. I just kinda wish it was a better game. There's so much to love about it, but I'm constantly frustrated by it, and it's not even the difficulty that bothers me.

Picked up Stray and Elden Ring, and put in an hour or so on both. Stray is adorable and Elden Ring feels overwhelming at first.

I continue to think that the 30% cut that Apple takes is far too high, but it will only be changed by regulators. Apple has repeatedly gone all out to preserve their cut, and seem to think any erosion of that fee is an existential threat to their business. I'd be happy to see Twitter join that fight, but it's unlikely to be a winning one. Then again, maybe a big public fight like this is exactly what lawmakers need to change the rules. If there's one thing that Elon is good at, it's getting attention. Of course, he hasn't exactly been making friends with the current administration, but both sides are looking for ways to reign in "big tech."

I agree that the trailers were not great and that the advertising for this movie was lacking overall. I also don't think the very generic title helped the film at all. It also didn't review super well, so not a lot of word of mouth so far.

It's been a while since I last played, and that was on a Xbox One X, but I couldn't really tell what was different in that trailer. Certainly nothing to complain about as a free update, but it doesn't look like a significant change to my eyes.

This reminds me of one of the great anecdotes in that GQ profile where Cameron is talking to the head of Fox who says: Even if it's not true, it is a window into Cameron's intentions. He's laying it on thick because that's the point. I don't think that makes it a better movie, but he sure hit was he was aiming for.

That's good. My post was largely in jest, but until they actually have them or release them, my default assumption is that Trump will succeed in delaying whatever case it is. I've long argued that it's the only thing he's really been consistently successful at, and given how many judges are sympathetic to him, it doesn't take a lot to understand why. This particular battle has been fought for four years! And this has just been a fight to reveal documents that the government has to the freaking House of Representatives! The law in question isn't exactly complicated, it just says that when the Ways and Means chairman asks for this stuff, the Secretary "shall furnish" everything requested. I understand that Trump's lawyers have successfully made it more complicated than that, but really the case is very straightforward, and again, all that happens here is that one part of the government has to give another part of the government access to a few files. We haven't even gotten close to anything like a criminal trial, or hell, even a criminal investigation. Delaying that kind of action for four years just seems absurd.

Trump will sit on his hands and refuse to hand the documents over, which will put him back in court, but will still be enough to delay release until the GOP officially drops the request in January.

I went and did the gravestone battles today and in those I really felt some camera issues that didn't bother me much during the rest of my play through. There were two things that bothered me most. The first is when bosses have attacks that you almost cannot avoid if you have the camera lock on. This definitely came up with story bosses, but it was much more noticeable on the berzerkers. It's a bad feeling when you're desperately trying to get away from a boss charging up an AOE, but you can't get away fast enough because you're strafing around them instead of running away. The other problem was how poorly the camera handles multiple serious threats at the same time. On balanced it basically never mattered if a few ads got left out of sight for a bit, even if they hit me I'd be fine. With the gravestone fights that have multiple targets, it was a real pain to keep track of things and it felt like I was really fighting the camera to see what I needed to in order to survive.

I expect that we'll see Apple and Amazon continue to invest heavily in streaming. They probably won't go as crazy as they have been, but I expect them to keep putting money and effort into video. If we envision where all this ends up, there has to be some point at which more and more of the money from linear television, cable or otherwise, ends up going to the streaming services. It's a very big pie, and everyone will want some piece of it. It's one big reason why I've been surprised that it took so long for Netflix to launch an ad supported tier. So much of the money in traditional television has been ads, and that money doesn't necessarily translate to D2C payments. Just like no one wants to pay $100/year for Facebook, no one wants to pay sufficient amounts to justify all the content that gets made every year. It's the same reason Cable TV still has ads. So I have to imagine that when we get to that point where streaming has devoured most of the money from linear, it'll be because ads are back as the primary revenue driver.

That's a great profile of Cameron. It's kinda hilarious how much James Cameron plays the "I'm James Cameron" card. Not that his track record doesn't justify it, but it's still kinda funny. I bought tickets to opening night in Dolby Cinema 3D, which I hope is one of the best ways to see it. I feel like there has been so much format discussion over the years leading up to this film, and now that tickets are available it's really not clear if there's a "best" way to see it or what the differences are. I found some Reddit threads that seem to have decent info, but who knows if that's right. I also don't even know where it ended up with the HFR stuff. I feel like the last I read about it was that only some sequences were rendered in 48FPS, but the whole thing would be displayed at 48, just frame doubled most of the time, but I don't really know if that was the final result. I also have no clue what frame rate different theaters are showing it at. They probably just don't want to confuse anyone or preference one type of experience over another, and theaters probably aren't putting in new equipment for this one, so whatever. Still, as someone who wanted to see the HFR versions of The Hobbit films and Gemini Man, I'd make an extra effort to see this one in whatever crazy format Cameron puts out there if they clarified what the choices are.

I like voice assistants. I had a bunch of Alexa devices around my home, but they've now been replaced by Google devices since Alexa has gotten so needy (constantly asking to do more or telling me to set something up or to ask for one more thing) and it seems to have gotten way more sensitive over the years, more often waking when no one asked for her. That said, the vast majority of my interactions with any home voice assistant is to: control lights or other smart home things and to set kitchen timers. I've never had any desire to buy anything or order an uber or do any of the other monetizable actions that Amazon was looking for. Now, it doesn't surprise me that Alexa doesn't make money, but it does surprise me that it cost them so much to run it. $10B is what Zuck spent on the metaverse, and say what you will about what they've made so far, but they're working on really hard technology problems that have the potential to turn into enormous businesses. Losing that much money on an established product that hasn't shown any potential for profit is wild. Google an Apple have pretty good incentives to keep building these things, but unless Amazon can figure something else to do with it, I don't see why they'd keep throwing money at it. Maybe white label the voice recognition tech?

I agree it's a real conundrum, but it is the path that Iger set Disney on and it doesn't seem like they have much choice in the matter. TV revenue will continue to decline and direct to consumer is their only answer. If Iger can solve that puzzle, he'll really be the genius he's often referred to as.

Just finished the end of the main story, only leaving some ravens, berzerkers, and the crucible left undone. I just checked my time in game and I was shocked it was only at 23 hours. I would have guessed more than that. I'll probably spend a bit more time with it, but overall I'm extremely happy with the game. Some initial thoughts on the end of the story:

I think the benefit of GoW being a continuous shot matters more in how the devs end up thinking about the camera than in the shot itself being unbroken. Kind of like how a lot of diets work not because a specific selection of foods is really better for you, but because people who diet watch what they eat more carefully in general. Forcing the whole game to be a single shot means the devs have to be conscious about the camera movements in every cut-scene, QTE, gameplay moment, and all the little bits in between. I find the camera movements in both GoW games to be so much more interesting and well considered than they are in nearly any other game, and I think having strict rules for what they will do with it helps make that difference. I love how the camera might float around a room to catch all the different perspectives of a conversation before again settling back on your character. I don't think the style of the GoW games is necessary to get that kind of attention on camera moves, Horizon Forbidden West and the Last of Us games are excellent examples of games that care about the camera but don't subscribe to the same philosophy. Still, there is a huge gulf between games that do care about the camera and those that don't. Single take or no, having every conversation carefully choreographed and dynamic is so much better than you standard Skyrim static bore.

I certainly won't argue that Chapek did a good job, but the fundamental problem that Disney faces is one that Iger didn't fix during his tenure. For a long time now, cable TV has driven most of their profits. Go back to their financials in 2012 and you quickly see that cable TV made up more than half their profits, by the time Iger left in 2020 media networks made $9 billion in operating income, where the company as a whole made $8 billion, largely thanks to streaming more than wiping out all the profits from the movie studios. It didn't take a genius CEO to tell you that cable tv in 2020 was not where you wanted to rest your future. Certainly there is still time for streaming to become a profitable business, but the slope of cable tv income was always going to go down faster than the streaming income went up. I trust Iger to do a much better job of figuring out the parks and making the filmmakers happy and to better deal with the politics surrounding the company. What will really save Disney though is to actually turn Disney+ into the kind of profit machine that ESPN has been.

Took an opportunity to see it this weekend, and it’s fun. It’s not amazing, and I’m not sure it’s the most in depth criticism of the issues it addresses, but it’s consistently entertaining. I enjoy fancy food and I’ve had the opportunity to eat at more than a few Michelin Star restaurants, but I’m in no way a hardcore foodie. Still, I’ve had enough exposure to that scene to really feel what this film is aiming for, and I think they hit it pretty well. Not that I think that’s necessary. You probably don’t need to have seen a single episode of Chef’s Table or had thousand dollar meals to understand what the film is saying about creation and obsession. There are a few revelations that really made a mark, but also ended up overshadowing other moments that felt shallow by comparison. The leads all do excellent jobs, and the film has a few well earned moments of comedy. Honestly, my biggest issue with the whole thing might be that they only charge “$1250 a head.” Add a zero to that price at the very least.

I happily rewatch scenes when I see them posted, but I almost never seek them out myself. What inevitably ends up happening to me is that I think of a scene in one context or another, think to myself “I should re-watch that movie” and end up not watching the scene.

Without reading through this whole thread, can someone chime in as to if the PS5 is still the “best” way to play this? A quick google brought up a bunch of links from launch that suggested that the PC version was a bit rough and to go with the PS5 if it’s an option. Have things changed over time, or is there really not much difference?

The Daily Beast's headline reads Elizabeth Holmes Should Have Faced a Life Sentence and they lay out a case that she got off easy because she's a white collar criminal, given that the sentencing guidelines called for 80 years. I'm not great a putting numbers to things like this, but 11 years feels about right in a vacuum, but you probably wouldn't have to try too hard to find someone who got way more time for far lesser crimes.

As with everything in all Trump investigations, I really want to see this go somewhere and come up with a result, but I don't expect it to.

I quick aside for Elden Ring players: how would you compare the combat difficulty to these God of War games? I haven't picked up Elden Ring because I'm not enticed by difficulty and expect I would be frustrated by the combat experience. Is there a difficulty setting or some specific fights in GoW that might be a good analog for the general combat in Elden Ring, or are they too different for a comparison to be useful?

I just unlocked a big sidequest area (the crater) after the "Creatures of Prophecy" mission, which is definitely getting towards the end of the story, and it's the first time I've felt like the level design really missed the mark. Up to now, I think the game as been extremely well paced. I've done every side quest as soon as I've found it, and some of those missions are really great, hardly feeling like side quests at all. They flow naturally through the areas, requiring very little retracing of steps, if any. When you're plowing through a well told mission, discovering secrets and unlocking chests along the way, the game just feels incredible. The Crater is probably the first area in the game that messes with that flow a bit too much. There are still sections where you get gracefully lead through, but there are a bunch of side quests all happening at once, and a couple different paths you can take, with large areas to explore in multiple directions. This has made me retrace my path a good few times, trying to find this piece of that quest or something I missed. The quests then also take you back to some of the same areas for new bits. It's the most "open world" that either of these new GoW games has felt to me, and I think it demonstrates well why the level design is so key to the feel of the game, and what happens when direction becomes less clear. When you do go back through an area, searching for that missed quest item or secret, it's just not a great time. The areas feel dead and empty, and the little traversal bits that are great moments for story dialog just feel tedious. Now, I think many people will not have that problem, even in this area. If you're not chasing down each quest, or if you just move "forward" relentlessly. It's quite possible that I'm breaking the flow myself and that I'd have ended up finding everything if I just kept pursuing the next thing in front of me, rather than trying to make sure I didn't miss anything. Still, I think it's notable that I haven't had that problem at all so far, most of the way through the game, and how well it has worked for me. It also has me re-thinking some of my criticisms about the game world. My first impression, especially when you're in actual towns, was that they felt too empty. Compared to something like the settlements in Forbidden West, or even the camps in Last of Us, they just felt unnaturally devoid of stuff. Having towns built like a dungeon, with a more or less linear path and little going on, felt like a missed opportunity to make the game world feel more alive. Now I'm thinking that it was probably the right call. This game, and the way it's structured, relies heavily on a specific pace of progression, and any level that effectively leads the player through, without making them feel as though they missed something, serves that purpose best.

I think that's probably fair, but I think it's also important to note that plenty of crypto activity already falls under existing law. That's why FTX.US is separate from FTX.com. So Crypto guys don't get to pretend that they're immune from the law or that crimes with crypto aren't big boy crimes, but still let them burn their little sandbox to the ground.

I don't care about soccer/football, but I'm very much here for every story about how this goes poorly, like this one about the brand new hotel not being ready for FIFAs top execs.